First Dragoon
by kjanuary
Summary: This is the war that set humans free - at the expense of their humanity. It begins with a commander cradling the skull of the monster he killed, and it won't end until Kadessa falls from the sky. Currently: their newest Dragoon might be insane.
1. First Dragoon

[A/N: I'm sure everyone who's played LoD to the end has their own version of the Dragon Campaign in mind. This is mine.]

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FIRST DRAGOON

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"What's he doing now?"

A soldier--young, peach-faced--stood on his toes to watch his commander limp to the enormous, gasping, bleeding monster they had brought down. Fifteen men out of fifty remained of their company, the rest shredded, crushed, or burned to a crisp by the frenzied rage of the dragon. Even now, with wings ruined, back broken, and lifeblood geysering the air with every beat of its belabored heart, its scarlet eyes blazed with unflagging defiance.

No doubt the Winglies hastened their way, summoned by the billowing smoke of the battle. Their magic and their war machines would make short work of the fatally wounded dragon, as well as the soldiers from the rebel human army. Still, Commander Zieg Feld, rather than ordering his remaining martyrs to retreat, approached the still-lethal hulk with grim purpose, clutching his dripping sword and cracked ribs.

Watching, another soldier shook his head. "He's mad. Let's get out of here."

The younger soldier started after his commander, but Belzac, second-in-command and unblinkingly loyal, held him back. His rumbling voice, deep as a canyon, silenced the murmurs of dissent.

"Stay where you are. You've done your part. Wait for the commander."

Belzac handed the boy back to the rest and climbed over the outcrop that sheltered them, following his straying commander across the charred and shattered hillside where they brought the dragon down. He had no more fear of his soldiers fleeing than he did of the Winglies, or of Zieg having misjudged. Belzac was a mountain of a man, patient and inexorable, and Zieg had a beacon blazing in his heart that never led him wrong.

At the crunch of cinders under his feet, Zieg held up a staying hand. He did not look back. "Careful, Belzac. It's still dangerous."

"It's already done for. The Winglies will kill it."

"Diaz doesn't want it killed. He wants it ours." Zieg turned his head, but his eyes remained on the dragon. Ashes grayed his face, and sweat matted his golden mane. "I didn't bring my men out here to waste them."

Belzac studied the dragon. Gasps of dark smoke issues from its shattered mandibles. Eyes like coals fixed on the commander as Zieg approached. "You can't reason with a monster," Belzac said. "It can't be tamed."

"It doesn't need to be tamed. It just needs to yield."

"Zieg. Why did Diaz send us?"

Belzac stayed where he stood, while Zieg's voice grew more distant. "Mayfil. The City of the Dead." The dragon's tattered wings rustled, never to fly again. "The damned Winglies enslave us, body and soul. No one's even controlled a dragon, though. Even the Winglies fear them." Now Zieg stood within striking range. The enormous, dying beast lay motionless, its thoughts--if it had any--unknown. "He sent me to catch a dragon's soul."

"Soa help us."

Zieg knelt at the dragon's misshapen head and took its skull in his hands. It exhaled a cloud of smoke that hid him from sight for a moment. Sparks flew, but Zieg remained, staring into its mad eyes. The passion of one clashed against the rage of the other. Defiance ran in common veins.

"Yield to me. You are beaten. I am stronger. Yield to me," Zieg whispered. The dragon gave no sign of understanding, no glimmer of intelligence. "We will be stronger together. I'll write your name in fire across their cities and across the world. Yield to me and be eternally victorious." On he chanted, voice wavering with strain. Gradually, the spark in the dragon's red eyes flickered and dimmed.

A weary call reached across the scorched earth. "Sir, the patrol..."

High overhead, fluorescent wings glimmered through the billowing cinders. The Winglies had noticed. Soon they would come down.

"Stand your ground," Belzac answered, hefting his war hammer.

Zieg seemed to have put himself into a trance. Belzac could not tell whose will had prevailed, the pain-crazed monster or the rebel commander. He glanced at the sky again. He would be hard pressed to direct the men and protect Zieg simultaneously.

The spark in the ember eyes went out, and as it did, a ruddy light ignited deeper inside the empty husk. So bright that even the dragon's hide could not conceal it, it made Belzac's eyes ache. That would bring the patrol down, he thought, and started forward.

Zieg sucked in his breath and wavered to his feet. He went to the long rent in the dragon's side where, earlier, he had delivered the fatal blow. One of the soldiers shouted, too late, as the commander plunged his arms into the steaming, bloody cavity.

A flash as bright as an exploding star, a ripple of heat, the roar of an inferno, swept over Belzac. He stumbled toward where Zieg had stood, but the commander was gone.

He had neither time for wonder nor room for doubt. The air filled with the crystalline hum of the Winglies descending. He pounded back toward his men, only to have two Winglies drop down to intercept him. Six more flanked his soldiers: tall, slender, frosty-skinned unmen, dragonfly-winged, in armor like mother-of-pearl. The awareness that humans outnumbered them almost two to one did not dismay them. Their weapons could pierce all but the best of human-made armor, and humans had no magic.

The captain singled out Belzac for his height; few human men could look one of the Winglies in the eye. "Runaway slaves and rebels." His voice was music, his eyes cold rubies. "We will take you to Zenebatos for your trial, or kill you here if you resist."

_Die without hesitation when there is something to die for_: that was Diaz's advice and Belzac's creed. The law codes of Zenebatos allowed for life in prison (or a voluntary return to slavery) for runaways, a classification which included the rebel human army. The human soldiers lowered their weapons. Diaz had too few soldiers to waste in profitless battles to the death.

Promptly the Winglies collected them, herding their captives into a cluster. Their snowy-haired captain surveyed the charred earth, the smoke-filled sky. He hovered well away from the enormous carcass, keeping his feet off the stained ground. "What have you done here?"

An unwary soldier snorted. "We killed a dragon. What the hell's it look like?"

In a blur of light, the captain shot back and struck him to the ground. The soldier did not rise. "Blasphemer," the captain breathed. "You will speak with regret of what you have done. There are not even a dozen of this race in all the world."

They had not known.

"Captain." One of the inhuman patrol pointed. Something moved inside the chest cavity of the dead dragon, struggling to get free. As they watched, it emerged, frail-looking and ungainly: a newborn dragon, although 'born' could not be the word. Belzac held his breath.

The captain gestured with his spear. "Subdue, seal, and bring it in for investigation. This will interest the scholars. We have no records of draconic origin." Two of his patrol flew over to obey.

Belzac stirred. "It's not a d--"

A spear smashed into his mouth, cutting him off. He spat a bloody tooth into his hand and eyed the Wingly who struck him.

"Which of you slew it?" the captain demanded.

"Our commander." The youngest soldier's voice shook.

The captain turned to Belzac, just as the newborn creature let out a shrill of alarm. One of the Winglies had jabbed it. "Leave him be," Belzac rumbled through a mouthful of blood.

"Do not speak unless spoken to, human, or we will add to the charges you're facing."

It squalled again. Belzac stood like a mountain. The captain looked into his eyes, raised a hand, and threw a ball of crackling fire into his chest.

The world inverted; color and sound lost meaning. He gasped for air and found rock against his back. The front of his iron breastplate flaked away in charred fragments. He sat up. A Wingly tried to club him down, and Belzac wrenched his spear away.

"Resisting arrest," the captain declared.

He would not have chosen this death. Belzac was patient, was humble among his fellow men, was rarely moved by strong emotion; but his one crystal of pride lay in never again submitting to his former masters. He surged upright, throwing off his ruined breastplate and his less than useless helm, letting the heated air blow over his sweat-slick skin and shaven head. He had the height of any Wingly man and twice the girth, and all that he feared was cowering.

"Believe Diaz," he told his men, "and follow Zieg, no matter what he becomes."

"Take him down," the captain ordered. "Execute the rest if they move."

Belzac dodged a freezing plume of magic that left his near side numb. The Winglies' power hissed in the air around him. He hurtled onward, unstoppable, crashing through their spears and their shell-light, steel-hard armor like ninepins. Even with his wings, the captain moved too slowly; perhaps he did not believe a mere human could harm him. Belzac plucked him out of the air like a cherry and threw him down. He grabbed a handful of silver hair and smashed the captain's startled face into the ground. Blood spattered, paler than that which ran in any human veins.

A tendril of angry magic snatched him off and flung him sprawling like a child's toy. Invisible hands held him own. They reached into his lungs to crush them. He gulped desperate nothingness, straining to reach just one more of his enemies before the world fell away.

The newborn dragon shrieked, far away.

A second scream overlapped it, fierce and wild.

Belzac forced his eyes open through the swelling spots of blackness in time to see a creature like a comet plummet through the sky, cutting straight through two stunned Winglies, a man-shaped streak of fire whirling dizzying circles through their numbers, leaving a blazing afterimage in the air, a man with wings and a sword alight like the heart of a volcano. A third Wingly burst apart in spontaneous inferno. The magical bonds on Belzac vanished. Still he was too dumbfounded to respond until one Wingly, regaining his senses, drove a lance of light and ice at the burning apparition. The creature tumbled through the air, fast but clumsy with the newness of its own existence.

This was worth fighting for, worth the loss of fifty men. "Now!" he roared. "Kill them all!" To his delight, his men--his unarmed, battered, courageous men--obeyed. They closed in on their former tyrants, battering them with bare hands and stones, wrestling their weapons away.

Two more men died in the frenzy, before the last fleeing Wingly fell to the ground, a charred wreck. Not one escaped. Belzac tied his belt around a soldier's spurting artery and rose as their fiery deliverer came down.

"Zieg. You've done it," he said.

Zieg had the look of a feral god. His golden hair floated in the breeze of his own heat. His old, dented armor had transformed, spreading with its own red life to cover his body. Iron and leather molded into something like scales, spikes, and hide. That living armor had taken direct hits from powerful magic without yielding.

His newly-grown wings beat slowly, holding him a casual foot above the ground. They were not like their enemies' wings, formed of magic and energy, but of membrane, muscle, and heat. The veins in the commander's face glowed. He was half man and half dragon, no longer either, mightier than both.

Zieg seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes. His voice came out in a hiss. "Are they dead? Have we won?"

Belzac nodded.

"Good."

Zieg closed his eyes. Another shimmering wave of light and heat flowed over the hillside. The soldiers fell back, murmuring. Belzac lunged forward and caught Zieg as he fell, human again, but still radiating a residual heat.

He set his commander down on the outcrop, surrounded by the corpses of the Winglies, and steadied him until Zieg could sit up on his own. The eleven remaining soldiers circled around him. One passed up his canteen, which Zieg drained in a gulp. As the glow faded, he looked drained and gray.

"Four out of five lost," he said, when he could speak again. "You are valiant, my friends. I'm sorry we ask for your lives in such terrible numbers." Better to die free, Diaz always swore. No one needed to say it.

"Sir, what was that? What did you do?"

Zieg breathed deeply. "I went mad. Slightly." They waited for more. "I have... I am not only human now. I think I will have to be something else. I have that dragon's soul inside of mine." A ripple went through the listeners; they had not heard his intentions. "I... saw differently. My heart's still pounding. I could have burned the countryside from here to the mountains. I... I could have destroyed that entire patrol by myself."

They gazed at the smoldering, shattered bodies of the patrol, and the bodies of their comrades felled by the dragon. Zieg held up trembling hands. Belzac, standing beside him, caught the glimmer of liquid in the corners of his bloodshot eyes. Then the commander laughed, soft and hoarse. The sound bordered on hysteria.

Belzac touched his back. Zieg hunched over and vomited.

Almost forty dead men to win Diaz one manic warrior, one more-than-man to chase the Winglies into the clouds and battle them with magic to equal their own. Belzac, not an imaginative man, suddenly envisioned a whole band of dragon-souled soldiers, like a flock of bright and terrible birds, besieging the Winglies in their own accursed sky cities. He kept his hand on his commander's shaking back.

"We're done here," he said to the men. "Check for wounded. Patch yourselves up. Fort Magrad needs to know of this."

A querulous chirp brought his attention back to Zieg. The newborn dragon had crept up to investigate, still flightless, about the size of a large dog. At first it hissed when Zieg, not rising, put out a hand, but then it settled down to gnawing on his gauntlets.

"I thought that was you at first."

"Nope. Still a monster, even a little one." When its teeth punctured the gauntlet, Zieg winced and pulled his hand back. "It senses the dragon in me."

"Can you talk to it?"

"Not in those terms. It's true. They don't think like you or me. Predator-smart... But we can feel each other." Zieg rubbed the short bristle along his jawline, looking away. "Almost forty men..."

Belzac climbed down and joined the survivors, checking for life among the bodies, and collecting identification and salvageable armor. Zieg watched. The dragonling chewed on the dead captain's thigh.

"I want to help," Zieg said, keeping his voice too low for the other men to hear, "but I feel so weak and cold. I could sleep for a week."

Belzac closed the eyes of a man who had escaped slavery with him. His young bride would be heartbroken. He took the man's yellow scarf as a memento for her. "I think your days as a commander are done."

"Yes. Of men."

They gazed at each other, understanding. "There are not many dragons in the world," Belzac informed him, remembering the captain's outrage.

A spark kindled in Zieg's eyes. He stood, holding the outcrop for balance until his legs found their strength. "There will have to be enough to bring the Winglies down."


	2. Roar My Name

[A/N: Thanks everyone who commented or faved the first chapter. I've been meaning to continue this, but _(insert excuse of your choice here)_. "First Dragoon" will ideally continue all the way through the battle at Kadessa, but not in a typical story format. Each "chapter" I see as more of a separate mini-story, told from a number of different viewpoints, in a number of different writing styles, as I see fit. I hope you enjoy reading at least some of them. Up next: a little of Belzac and Zieg's history, the first appearance of Shirley, and the genesis of the second Dragoon.]

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ROAR MY NAME

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Zieg led and Belzac followed: that was their way.

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To instigate was not in Belzac's nature. From childhood, he understood that he was likely to always be bigger than any of his fellow slaves at the quarry, and that this had practical implications beyond the nearly constant hunger from never eating his fill. Due to his size, he was doomed to be first singled out, first punished by his Wingly masters. Better to take the inevitable fall, and let some less conspicuous miscreant escape. He didn't mind being beaten so much if he were protecting someone. And if the punishment were half rations - well, he was always hungry anyway. He knew his owner would stop short of killing him; a human boy his size and strength was rare. So he held his tongue and made himself into a shield.

There was another aspect to his reticence: even if he did take the lead, his smaller peers invariably chalked up his courage to size alone. If he failed, his intended goal failed with him. None of the quarry slaves wanted to stand up where Belzac the behemoth had gone down.

It was truth when he was eight years old, stealing apricots - truth at eighteen when _someone_ killed the master's pseudodragon with a length of baling wire. No better fed than Belzac himself, it had bitten the arm off a little Minintos girl, and she bled out. The other slaves looked the other way when she died. They kept looking away when the Wingly who owned the quarry encased Belzac in an inch of ice and left him shivering until the sun set him free again.

After that, he knew it was simply best for him not to start things. Generally, he managed to abide by that wisdom. In the meantime, he kept his eyes sharp for a true leader.

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A short while after the incident with the pseudodragon, Belzac's master sold him. To the coliseum, he assumed. He gave his little sisters the goodbye kiss they were too young to recognize, bowed to the mother who had never been able to look at him without visibly calculating how much food he consumed, and left.

His new master did not want gladiators. He wanted human escorts, warriors and a few entertainers, to accompany wealthy Winglies with a mind to tour aesthetically remote parts of Endiness. Belzac's role was to deal with any wild monsters that crossed their path. Most Winglies had enough magic to ward off most creatures, if not kill them, but seeing a human fight off a harpy or a manticore was more exciting and required no energy on their own part.

Belzac still counted himself blessed to have escaped the coliseum. Here, at least, no crowds cheered on his death.

As for the leader he had in mind: he found him in Zieg Feld.

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Zieg, three years Belzac's junior, was sold to the same master after proving his fighting spirit. It ran in his blood. His grandfather had headed up a small group of humans, fugitives, who lived in a roughscrabble sort of freedom in a swamp for six years before being recaptured. It hadn't even been long enough to build a proper village, but Zieg wielded the fact to lay claim to that precious luxury - a surname, like the Winglies had - as if his ancestors had made some mark on history. He called himself the grandson of a chieftain.

Not that Belzac saw any special value in Zieg at first. He never considered that here was the leader he had been looking for. Everyone took Zieg for an ordinary man, even Belzac, until he got closer and saw his fanatic's eyes, razor-blue.

They traded blows once, purely for profit, in a jeering circle of their fellow slaves. Their owner broke it up, fearing his own financial loss, before either combatant could lay claim to the fifteen-copper wager. He took it himself and left them both in irons. There was no need to waste magical bonds on mere frontier fighters.

"Your name's Belzac, right?" Zieg asked when they were left alone. He held two teeth in his fist, and wiped an intermittent trickle of blood from his mouth that was staining his short beard crimson. (Their owner had sent for someone with healing magic to fix that. Zieg's wild golden hair made him a pet of some female Winglies, and their owner had no wish to jeopardize his good looks.) "Good fight."

"You too. You enjoy it."

"Sometimes. It's not slaves I want to fight." Zieg smiled crookedly, eyeing Belzac. "They tell me you're all brawn, no brain. I get the feeling that's not true."

Belzac had dealt with that assumption so long that it failed to sting. "Of course not. I'm just quiet."

"What are you, half Giganto?"

"Not according to my mother."

"She an honest lady?"

Belzac stretched as best he could in the shackles. "Are you that eager to get in another round?" he asked, and Zieg laughed. "Just because I'm quiet doesn't mean I'm stupid - or bloodless."

"I see. What do you get out of silence, then?"

"I learn a lot more when people don't have their guard up around me."

"That goes for that bastard Wingly, too."

He followed Zieg's eyes to where their master stood before a communication crystal, haggling over the price of a healing spell with the projected image of a distant Wingly a few continents away. "Yeah, him too," he agreed in an undertone. "He's owned me for almost three years and thinks I'm thick as a marmot."

Zieg leaned back, licking the blood from his lip. "I'm getting away, either this trip or the next, depending on how many Winglies are along. They say there's a man gathering all the runaway slaves he can at an old Wingly outpost in the northwest. His name's Diaz, and I have a mind to meet him. Are you in?"

Just that, so simple and calm.

.

Success was in front of them, because Zieg would not accept failure. Cleverer than any slave had a right to be, with more hope than any slave had a chance to be, Zieg put voice to the words that were in Belzac's heart, and set him into motion. Once in motion, though, Belzac was unstoppable. He stood by Zieg's side until all the plans came to fruition, taking his beatings, watching his back, until the red-washed day in the swamp when the slaves rose up to take their lives back from their master and his clients. It was Belzac and Zieg who walked away with the most blood on their hands, and neither could say who had taken on more guilt or more danger.

In the end, a full thirty slaves escaped that day - mostly men. They, like Belzac once, kissed their families goodbye and promised to bring them to a better life as soon as they could. One man brought his two teenaged children along, which was a mistake. One fell behind, and in trying to rescue her, the father wasted both of their lives. Only one man fled with his wife, who was very young and had just buried their second stillborn child.

"Don't you dare think of leaving me behind, you coward," she said to him in front of all the runaways. "Where there's danger for you, there'll be danger for me as well. What will I have left without you? Either you'll be free or you'll be killed, and either way you're dead to me. We go together."

She had very, very long hair that was very red, the almost unworldly color of the clouds during the best of sunsets. She was also small, with delicate wrists and ankles. Zieg did not want her along. Belzac argued her right to try for freedom with the rest of them, while her husband stood silently by. "It'll go even worse for her without a husband," he reminded him.

He had little chance to think of that moment again, for the road to Magrad was a long and bitter one for the runaways. They lost eight more along the way, to hunger and exposure, to wild beasts, to flooded rivers, to Winglies searching for fugitives, and to sheer discouragement. She reminded him of it when they reached the northlands, when she bound up a chunk that a maddened bear took out of his back for crossing at the wrong point of a stream.

"I'm beholden to you," Zieg told her, watching the operation, while the other slaves huddled around the tiny fire they had risked kindling. "I don't know where I'd be without him."

"Still a slave, like I'd be," she answered at once, smearing a precious dollop of their carefully hoarded healing potions onto the wound.

Belzac, surprised by the cold sting of it, couldn't help twisting around, and she met his eyes. "Now we're settled," she said. A bit of hair fell free from the knot at the back of her head, tumbling over her eyes. The thoughtless grace with which she brushed it back again laced like veins of copper ore through the canyons of his dreams from then on.

.

And so it went.

The second dragon killed eighteen of Diaz's men before surrendering its soul. This time, they were volunteers, more eager to see their former commander arc through the air, alight with inhuman power - to see a second Dragoon rise from the carcass of its untamable progenitor, a new miracle wrought by Emperor Diaz's near-holy hands - more eager for this than they were afraid of the terrible, near-immortal dragon that must be slain.

Slow-moving, larger and hoarier than the red-eyed dragon, it had made its lair deep in the blush-colored canyons beyond the Gigantos' ancestral lands. Zieg and his hunters slew two Wingly patrols on the way to find it. They were guided by a young Gigantos, who had once seen the monster's molted skin in that region. A mere child among his own people, he towered over the human hunters. "The Winged Ones must think their mice will rebel next," he said, laughing, to Belzac, the only one who could look him in the eye.

They cornered it like terriers facing a bear, their weapons no more than beestings against its rubbly hide. Zieg worried it from above, a scarlet hummingbird, and when it rose up to snap at him, the others savaged its underbelly. Finally, maddened with pain or the close of its millennia-long existence, it reared and snapped its enormous jaws closed on the first Dragoon. They all could hear the frightful shriek, the crunch.

The newborn red-eyed dragon, trailing doglike after Zieg even after it had reached more horselike proportions - it grew rapidly in the month after its genesis - screamed and darted to attack, blazing. Its assistance was not needed. The aged monster moaned, recoiled, and then was engulfed in flame from within.

Belzac received a number of mild burns from the conflagration as he dragged Zieg out of the gore. "Quite unpleasant," Zieg panted, reaching up with his unbroken arm to press a golden crystal stone into Belzac's hand. "I'll be glad of your help next time." And Belzac felt the dead dragon's heartbeat inside, slow and tragic, falling into sync with his own.

A boulder deep within the dragon's lair crumbled to expose its miniature replica, still soft-skinned and gleaming.

.

They returned to Fort Magrad and their Emperor giddy with triumph. A skirmish on the way home ignited the Dragoons' borrowed warlike senses, and they descended on Magrad fully transformed, crimson and gold, the first- and second-born of a new race. Belzac dwarfed Zieg, a condor to his former commander's hawk.

At their approach, the rebel humans cowered, fearing some new Wingly monstrosity. Diaz alone climbed to the top of the city and roared their names, the first to cheer his creations.

At the very least, Belzac managed not to vomit after the initial transformation of man to Dragoon. Later, Zieg nodded approval, his own attention locked on the living armor that still sealed his broken arm of its own accord, protecting the fracture. It was not for him that Belzac struggled for poise; not even for Diaz. He knew that Magrad held his dead comrade's widow. He did not want her to see the weaknesses of the power which her husband had died to gain him.

He wanted her to think well of him.


	3. Belzac and Shirley

[A/N: This is the last section for a little while in Belzac's POV. I hope y'all are having fun reading!]

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BELZAC AND SHIRLEY

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_But Lancelot mused a little space  
He said, "She has a lovely face;__  
God in his mercy lend her grace,  
The Lady of Shalott."_

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The third dragon - pearlescent white, smaller than the others, with gossamer wings and a head like an iris flower - found them.

She flew out of the east, following the setting sun to Fort Magrad, carrying the crumpled body of her murdered offspring in her middle claws. Wingly spears had scored her sides, leaving wide swaths of metallic blood on her glowing scales, and the light had gone from all but one of her eyes. Her wailing cry echoed down the valley long before the humans saw her, and their hearts ached in instinctual harmony.

At twilight she landed, winging down to claim the center of the great stone amphitheatre where humans had declared themselves free to die as they chose. She hissed at the soldiers who reached for their weapons, but seemed uninterested in violence. She huddled over the body of her child, crooning disconsolately, and ignored them all.

When Emperor Diaz saw the dragon, he took to his heels and ran all the way to where his two Dragoons lived on the edge of the growing city, careless of dignity.

.

An entire tower had been set aside for the pair. Belzac would have preferred to remain among his former comrades-in-arms, where he could drink the dragon's raging soul to numbness, or play with the rebels' youngling and remind himself why he had given up mere, comforting humanity. Diaz wanted them set apart and above, however, to inspire courage in the soldiers: see what we have done in the face of our oppressors!

Zieg simply found it practical.

The young dragons that had been birthed, or hatched, or generated to obey them grew by the day, ate ravenously, and could not entirely be trusted around humans. Zieg's beautiful, arrow-quick Dart made its aerie in the tower ramparts, while Belzac's massive eyeless Condor slept on the ground floor beyond a cautionary wall, built shoulder-high around the tower. The Dragoons lived upstairs between the two, in a large open room that was not home. They had time only for war and sleep and wandering in their own thoughts. Visitors - the few they received - did not enter, but met them in the courtyard below.

The day the white dragon came, Belzac sat in the courtyard of the tower, past Condor's enclosure, with one of their regular guests. Three months a widow now, she wore his dead comrade's yellow scarf around her waist, incongruous over a mourner's customary black. She busied herself with the packing of a satchel full of bandages, medicinal herbs, and a few black-market vials of Wingly curative magicks.

"We don't actually need bandages," Zieg told her once. The souls they had stolen from the dragons maintained them; not unbreakable or immune to pain, but thus far indestructible.

"I know," came her swift answer. "I come by to remind you that half of you is only human." Belzac never forgot.

Now she paused, a different day, sweeping her cherry-red hair over her shoulders to fall in a silky sheet to her hips. Standing, her face was on a level with Belzac's where he sat. The question he had just voiced hung in the air, crumbling with every moment of her silence.

"Only think about it," he said. "That's all."

Her gaze glossed across the courtyard, measuring the slow creep of time. "You don't waste much time," were her first words.

"I try not to. But I _have _been patient."

"Four months?"

"Four years, Shirley - ever since I was sold to your husband's master and met you. And I'll wait four thousand more if that's what you need."

Shirley took his big hand in both of hers, her tanned skin milky pale in comparison to his bronzed, battered knuckles. The pulse in her thumbs beat against his wrist. He watched its echo trembling in the veins that crossed her fragile collarbone. "Belzac, my wonderful friend, I'm a soldier's widow. I'm the child of slaves going back more generations than I can count. I've had one child stillborn and buried another before he was even a year old. I'm not even twenty-two, Belzac."

"I understand."

"Maybe so." She shrugged a little, avoiding his eyes. "I am very fond of you and Zieg, you know. It's not impossible that I could fall in love with you, if you were just a soldier."

Then he really did understand. "You couldn't love a Dragoon?"

"I couldn't be in love with one." She touched his face, pityingly, almost pushing him away. "You need someone to fly beside you. I need someone to stand at my side. We're different now."

"Belzac! Zieg!"

Shirley's hand dropped, and Belzac stood. His lord and emperor hopped over the courtyard gate and jogged to him, flushed and perspiring. A wiry little man, Diaz had the peculiar kind of ferocity seen in terriers and fighting cocks. His eyes glittered with a grin he couldn't suppress. "Miss." He bowed slightly to acknowledge Shirley, who curtsied. "Belzac, where's Zieg?"

"Up here," Zieg's voice drifted down from the tower. He leaned out the upper window. "Milord, where'd you stow your guards?"

"They're catching up." Diaz's teeth flashed behind the black-pepper thicket of his mustache. "I'm safe enough among my Dragoons. Haven't you been watching the sky?"

"No, milord."

"Then let me tell you about the dragon that's just come calling. It's sitting in the amphitheatre waiting on you."

Zieg whooped; Shirley covered her mouth. Diaz threw his arms wide, their miracle-worker, as delighted with events as if he had summoned the dragon himself, and no one could say he had not. A panting guard rounded the corner, spotted Diaz, and paused to mop his face. Then he raised his javelin and threw, a true hit, piercing the little emperor who had turned to greet him.

All joy ended. "No!"

Belzac lunged, scooping his staggering lord out of danger's reach. The Dragoon armor flowed and hardened across his skin like lava erupting from within his soul. Zieg leapt from the tower window like an arrow out of heaven, throwing his arms forward to engulf the assassin with white fire. His wings flashed into existence a heartbeat before he hit the ground. With an animal shriek of fury, he dragged the assassin skyward, an eagle with its prey. Diaz's other guards - if they were – came running into the courtyard in time to see one golden-armored Dragoon drop to the ground with an earthshaking thud, while the other ascended in a streak of raging fire.

"Assassin!" Shirley cried, gesturing after Zieg. "He wounded the emperor!"

If one had infiltrated Fort Magrad - either a human traitor or a Wingly under an illusion - then there could be more. Belzac weighed the chances that the Soa-forsaken wretch whom Zieg had snatched away was the only traitor among their numbers, and decided that they were not good.

"Stay!" he barked to Shirley, tightening his arms around Diaz's body. A tremor of power surged out from the Dragoon, rippling the solid ground like a stone thrown into a still pond. Let the mountains fall, he thought, and a crest of solid rock erupted from the ground at the courtyard gate, walling it off. The startled human soldiers sprang back to avoid the rubble. No further danger could threaten them from outside.

Condor loped out of his enclosure, attracted by the activation of the sleeping dragon spirit inside Belzac. His eyeless head swung from side to side, seeking a fight. Defend your den, Belzac commanded him, forcing images of Condor in the courtyard into his mind. No one to enter here. Condor responded with the image of the canyon where his parent had died, which seemed to be agreement.

In his arms, Diaz coughed, He wrapped his blood-slick hands around the haft of the javelin, trying to pull it out. "Put him down. Moving will make it worse," Shirley cried. "Let me look at him."

"Not safe here," he answered, bent down, and looped the arm that held Diaz's legs around her waist as well. She squeaked, but then put her arms around his neck. The weight of the two of them combined barely strained him now. He bent his knees and sprang into the air, wings pumping once, twice, and through the Dragoon-sized gap in the tower wall, landing with a thump on the second storey where he and Zieg lived.

As Shirley jumped free in a whirl of red hair, Belzac folded his wings and set Diaz down on Zieg's rumpled bed. The little emperor's eyes flicked wildly around the room, rimmed with white. "My chief of the guards will never stop laughing," he gasped.

"Don't talk, milord. Please lie still."

Quick-thinking Shirley had grabbed her satchel before Belzac carried her off. She upended it on the bed as Diaz tried again to wrench the javelin out. "Stop, stop, let me look at it." She pushed his hands away. Blood soaked Zieg's mattress. "Oh, no..."

The whoosh of wings escorted Zieg into the room, still Dragoon, still alight with fury. Sparks crackled around him. "How's milord?" he asked tersely.

Diaz twitched a hand toward him. "I've ruined your bed, my friend," he sputtered back.

"The assassin?" Belzac demanded.

"Wingly. I dropped him a few times until he got scared enough to talk." Zieg's jaw pulsed. "Then I ripped his wings off and I gave him a head start to the ground and Mayfil beyond." Shirley shuddered.

Diaz fixed his eyes on the jagged-edged piece of sky. His frantic gulps for air had them all holding their breath. His knuckles around Belzac's wrist turned white. "Shirley, what can you do for him?" Zieg asked, while blood pulsed and eclipsed around the moon-edged wound.

"_Do?_ He's got a javelin stuck clear through him." She muttered a word Belzac only ever heard from soldiers.

"My fault, dear girl, not yours," Diaz rasped. "Humans can't do miracles at will."

Humans couldn't, but there were two present who were a little more than mortal. Belzac caught Zieg's look. The dragonfire kindling behind his eyes confirmed Belzac's own thoughts. "Shirley, stay with milord," Zieg ordered. "Slow the bleeding. We'll be back." Then he hesitated, bent, and kissed his emperor's hand."

Shirley's eyes were distant stars. "Hurry," she said to Belzac. He nodded, and followed Zieg out the window, wings unfurling like peals of thunder. It was easy to make the transformation again; even if his blood had not been racing already from the shock of the ambush, the sight of the little dark man lying straining, and Shirley daubed with blood, would have spurred him.

.

The dragon became aware of them before they were within sight of it. Something like a ripple in the light and an answering skip in their hearts alerted them. It called out, a low keening moan that rumbled through Fort Magrad and rose until glasses trembled on their shelves.

"If it's come to fight, it could destroy Magrad," Zieg said over the rush of the wind around them.

"It hasn't yet," Belzac answered.

The sight of it surprised him. Bigger than either dragon that had faced before, it was simultaneously more delicate, as graceful as a crane and spider-crooked. It called again, more softly, now that they were in view. The Dragoons landed on the steps of the amphitheatre, between it and the wary guards and denizens of Magrad.

Zieg touched his arm, a gesture Belzac saw without feeling through his armor. "It isn't angry, Belzac."

"How can you tell?"

"Feel it."

Tentatively, anticipating backlash, he extended his dragon-fueled senses as he did when approaching Condor. He found the air full of anguish, so strong it rocked him. It took a moment for him to separate himself again and remind himself that the overpowering grief that filled the air was not yet his own. The big white dragon picked something up in its jaws, and for the first time, he noticed how stiffly it moved. Rivers of gold and silver flowed down its sides: blood. Even in agony, this monster was beautiful.

Zieg was speaking again. "If we kill it and bring it to Diaz, maybe it can heal him. You and I lived. It even fixed my broken arm. It shouldn't be too difficult to off the thing." They watched the dragon nose at its wounds. Belzac wondered how it saw them: as men or monsters, as its own kind or some accidental monstrous amalgamation.

He hesitated to answer Zieg, and in that pause, the dragon stretched out its long neck and lay the thing at their feet: a crumpled mess of silver blood and smooth white skin, the size of a pony and seeming small against the monster.

Belzac understood first. "It's the child," he muttered. "It's died out of order. It must have hatched while this one still had some life in it, and the Winglies killed it."

He came forward, no longer fearing, holding his arms up toward the beast. She - he was sure of that now - she sank her great, misshapen head into his arms. Her exhaled breath smelled of sweet blood and heated metal. He filled his mind with images of Zieg's Dart hunting deer in the mountains around Magrad, of Condor sleeping under the tower in long slow dreams of sand dunes blowing away grain by grain. He thought, infused with his own longings, of peace and the rest that comes after a hard struggle, and when he thought the dragon might be listening, he gave that thought the faces of him and Zieg and Diaz.

Her reply came, as the other dragons' did, in the form of a sense: of curling around a fragile eggshell, cracked down the sides, with the impression of a watchful and anxious mother. Belzac agreed, and in his mind, cracked open the egg to show a human shape inside.

Then the image faded, and with it the mixture of sensation and emotion. Slow as a sinking sun, the muscles holding up the vast broken body relaxed. At the end, Belzac was left holding her head as she breathed out, and did not stir again.

Half of a cheer rose from the assembled watchers, and was quickly aborted. None of them were quite sure what had happened. Belzac laid the dragon's head down beside the body of her offspring. The weight of it tripled suddenly when the Dragoon spirit inhabiting him crumbled away. It was less lovely now: just one more dead monster sprawled across the amphitheatre.

Feeling sick, he helped Zieg, also grimly human now, to cut open the body and search among the entrails until they found the first-sized, too-light stone. It did not gleam as the others had.

"Broken, maybe?"

"Maybe it's in the little one." But that carcass was empty. Belzac remembered what the Wingly told him: dragons are rare, and few, and their reproduction was a mystery. Yet someone had killed this one, and this time it had not been by Emperor Diaz's command.

He put it from his mind for now. "Diaz is dying. We'll do what we can," he said heavily. Leaving the dead dragon for the crowd to puzzle over, they ran back to their tower, on foot because no horse had been induced to bear them since the Dragoons in them were born.

.

They staggered into the upheaval of their quarters to find little hope left. Diaz lay with his head in Shirley's la. The javelin, streaming blood, lay like an obscene signature on the floor. "He's fading," she said without turning to them.

"Look -" Zieg thrust out the stone, which now held a dull flicker. As they gazed, it flared to bright and brilliant life, white shadows dancing around the room. He ran to Diaz's side, gray as marble, and held it to the emperor's bloody chest. Nothing happened. "Please, Soa dammit, please…"

"Zieg..."

"It's not working."

"Zieg!"

The Dragoon finally glanced around and saw what had Belzac spellbound. The radiant beams from the stone, now turned crystal-clear, coalesced around Shirley. They kindled a hundred thousand stars in her hair and eyelashes, while she backed away, hands behind her back. "It wants her instead," Zieg muttered, incredulous. Their plans for a Dragoon army abruptly fell apart; Belzac had not realized the spirits captive inside of them still had a will, and a desire, of their own. The dead dragon's soul was not interested in an emperor. It found a lonely mother-soul akin to its own.

Diaz's eyelids fluttered closed on that sight. His breath rattled.

Shirley held Belzac's gaze. The light ran down her face like teardrops of gold and silver. "I don't want this," she whispered.

"I know." He didn't know how to apologize for the immensity of what they were asking. Yet this was war, and their lives had already been sworn to the cause of human freedom. He gritted his teeth, and said as gently as he could, "We need you. It looks like you'll be flying with us now."

Biting her lip, Shirley came back to Diaz's side. She put her hand over Zieg's, wove her fingers through his, and claimed the white dragon's soul.

.

That night, while triumphal fireworks seared through the smoke of the dragon's pyre and Diaz, bare-chested to show the miraculous white scar, drank with the all the rebel humans in Magrad to the health of their heroes, the heroes themselves spent a quiet evening. Zieg burned the bloodstained sheets in the courtyard where the assassination had failed. A bed had been carried up for Shirley and a curtain strung for her privacy in half of the Dragoons' hall.

Belzac sat at her beside, lending his shoulder in place of a pillow. A few tears had dampened it over the hours. She had come out of her first transformation not only weak and ill, but blind.

"It will pass," he reassured her, as he had for hours.

"You can't know that, Belzac. We don't know anything about dragons. We're all blind about what we're doing."

He touched her radiant hair; she moved into his touch like a troubled child. "I can still hear her mourning," she whispered. "Never a mate, now, never children, always alone..."

"You aren't alone here, Shirley. You have us."

"Yes - us three in the whole world. And what are we? Monsters? Madmen? Are we even human? Are we mortal?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "But whatever we are, we're the same now."

After another little space, she said, "I haven't forgotten your offer." She moved away from him, sightless eyes turning toward the feel of the night breeze through the gap in the wall. She had been a handsome woman before; as a Dragoon, divine.

"I didn't forget asking it," he answered. "I never will. But I wouldn't be a man, much less a friend, if I forced you to answer."

"I can answer you now."

"Don't," he said after a thought. "Enough has died today."


	4. The Emperor In Love

[A/N: This is more of an "interlude" than an actual chapter, solely for the purpose of visiting the early days of the Dragon Campaign from Emperor Diaz's eyes. He has a very different storytelling voice than Belzac. The next chapter will be from Zieg's perspective, meeting Syuveil and Rose for the first time. Thanks for reading!]

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THE EMPEROR IN LOVE

.

_I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands  
And wrote my will across the sky in stars  
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,  
That your eyes might be shining for me  
When I came._

[T. E. Lawrence]

.

Every human who has risen up against a Wingly master is the child of Diaz, although he has no descendents of his own blood. He has never married. He is the sort of man who is always in love, his heart newly vowed and given away with every hour. He has loved women, fair or clever or only simple; he loves the slaves who become soldiers, new men, when he calls them by name; he loves the stones of Fort Magrad and the clear empty skies above it, and the rasp of sharpening blades in the armory.

Right now, he is madly in love with his three Dragoons.

They are, to him, both his children and his beloveds; his champions and his precious treasures; gifts given to him from the hand of Soa Himself. Diaz loves the wild, ferocious souls of the dragons inside of them and their fragile, wounded human selves equally. Watching them walk through the streets of Magrad as if the gravel road were paved with gold, their passage marked by cheers and torches in the hands of those who line the streets, the rain of wildflowers and weeds thrown in their path seems transformed into rose petals and lilies by the power of their presence. Diaz's heart could break with love.

His rebels share his admiration, although without the possessive adoration. Zieg Feld is their darling, a matchless warrior who seems, even before the Dragoon takes hold of him, to be made more of flame than of flesh. In Magrad, they don't have fine gems or precious metals to waste on finery, but Diaz has dyed the leather of Zieg's armor with madder and glazed the dented iron with red ceramic. He glows like an ember; he grins at the people who shout for his attention. Immortals look so.

Beside him walks Shirley, as reluctant to be praised as Zieg welcomes it. She shies back from the hands which strive to pluck blessings from the hem of her skirt. This goddess is willing to serve but evades worship. Her diffidence fails to discourage her admirers. They have forgotten the soldier's wife who used to carry buckets of water to the wounded; the White Dragoon is a new creature in their minds, ethereal in the silver and viridian of starlight, with hair like the sunset falling past her hips in an unrippled sheet.

On her other side is Belzac, whom no one attempts to touch; they fear him, unaware, as Diaz is, that he is the gentlest man in Fort Magrad. The giant, they call him. His armor, his own craftsmanship, is knobbly and fearsome, bronze and pig iron already pitted and scored with battle. They see the scars on his face and whisper about the fear he must strike in Wingly hearts when the wrath of the mountains falls on them.

Diaz looks past the scars to the face, and sees how the big man puts himself between Shirley and the crowds, a hand the size of her whole head resting lightly on her back. His lips stay closed, but his pale green eyes move constantly between Shirley and Zieg—a painful thing, to have one's heart cut in two.

Diaz smiles: he understands love.

He smiles always, so that his wrinkles become the more innocent laugh-lines. He is older than most remember; and a slave's life is spooled out short from birth. He will not see the day that the Wingly lords no longer rule his human brethren, and he knows it. His death is already weighing down his dreams. It is enough—it is more than he has ever prayed for—to see the heralds who will summon up the day's sun.

Between the Emperor's smile, and the Dragoons walking like messiahs through the street, the humans of Endiness have much to cheer.

The shadow of the Wingly with Diaz darkens the doorway where he waits for the Dragoons to come to him. "I see nothing extraordinary," he says coldly, unmoved by the crowd's riotous clamoring.

Zieg, laughingly crouched down for a child to toss its straggly garland around his neck, glances ahead to Diaz as he rises. He sees the Wingly instead—taller than men, platinum-haired, sharp-boned—and his grin vanishes. He speaks a word to his comrades, reaching for his sword.

Before the time his hand is on the hilt, a blaze of light erases them from view—red and golden fire, dazzling starlight. The assembled crowd falls back in alarm, the closest a little singed, those further out knocked flat by the abrupt single tremor of the earth beneath their feet. The air crackles with power. Still blinded by the flash, Diaz smiles wider. His heart warms.

A blazing wind whips around them. The edge of a wing whispers razor-sharp by his cheek. Suddenly a Dragoon is between him and his Wingly guest, glowing like the ruddy heart of a volcano. All afire and battle-eyed, Zieg hovers at the Wingly's height, sparks dripping from the blade he holds to the Wingly's eye.

Just beyond him Belzac crouches, feet still planted on the ground, but with a single beat of his wings he could cut the Wingly in half with his axe. His dented, discolored armor has become a rippled, golden coat of scales. Even poised low for attack, he looms. Above him, a white beacon of divine judgment hovers on broad wings: Shirley, with an arrow too bright to behold nocked to her bow.

Barely a breath has passed. Diaz looks past Zieg's spiny armor to his guest. "Nothing extraordinary?" he inquires. To his glee, the Wingly is speechless, an unprecedented condition in all the time Diaz has known him.

"A spy?" Zieg asks, his voice hollowed and roughened by his transformation.

"Only partly," Diaz answers for the Dragoons alone. Louder, he explains, "This Wingly is not our enemy tonight; he is an emissary, the steward of the one who once thought he owned me. When he returns to his lord, he will tell him and all the rest that we in Fort Magrad have no fear of Winglies now, and under our banner every downtrodden man, woman, and beast will rise up against their masters."

At last, the Wingly found his voice. "Keep your dogs down, Diaz!" he hisses, unmoving, while the tip of Zieg's blade draws a line of blood down his cheek.

"You may put away your fury, my noble friends, my beautiful ones. I think this bloodless whippet has see enough of Dragoon power for one evening."

They obey, but slowly, following Diaz's mood rather than the Wingly's imperative. Zieg's living scarlet armor melts back into his own dyed brigandine before he lowers his sword. Shirley descends like a dove; Belzac holds up his hand to guide her to the ground. The spectators, having recovered their feet and their wits, realize the illusory nature of the alarm. Few of them have seen the Dragoons in their altered forms so close. A murmur of admiration sweeps through them, then rises to whoops and cheers.

Deaf to them now that his mind is on battle, Zieg addresses his Emperor. "I thought we'd just been invited for supper."

"It's never that simple with him," Shirley interjects, her eyes keen on his face. "If it were just supper, the streets wouldn't have been already full of people waiting for us. Did you warn your guest beforehand?"

"I told him he would meet my favorite warriors." Diaz bows, sweeping his arm for them to proceed into the hall. "You may help yourselves. By the way, this will be the last time I summon you down. From now on, the people will see me go to you instead."

Watching the Dragoons pass, the Wingly's initial alarm has been replaced by cool consideration. He looks down at Diaz, his usual frigid dignity marred by the line of blood running down from the pinprick under his eye. "This is must be why we have been hearing reports of humans wielding magic," he remarks. "A very interesting turn of events—an unexpected development. The researchers at Aglis will be most intrigued."

"You understand now why your lord's demands that I send the humans home and surrender myself is absurd. We are not the ragged band he imagines. Our numbers only grow, and our forces are not inconsiderable."

"You are still only humans," the Wingly says, but his eyes follow the memory of the Dragoons.

Diaz once had his feet flayed on the steward's orders. His merciless face holds no more fear for a man called emperor, and he guesses the thoughts that must run behind his impassive face. "Yes, you will go back and tell your lord what you have seen," he agrees softly, as if they had been conversing aloud, "but not immediately. There is more I must do before your kind understands what I send against them. And the next time the Wingly lords send an emissary to me, it would be wise for him not to come alone."

The Wingly's brow creases. "You cannot keep me here," he says, unable to fathom the possibility of being held against his will.

Diaz leans in close, and the men he has kept near for this moment approach with their chains. "If you resist, or fly like the coward you are, I will send my Dragoons to burn you out of the sky," he assures him mildly. "In this place, it is no longer yours to give the orders."

He inclines his head, saving his bows for the Dragoons. Twice in a day he has left his onetime tormenter speechless. He is only so virtuous, and if anyone asked at that moment, he would admit to a certain amount of glee at seeing his former master's steward loaded down with the same chains he once put on human slaves. This is the only moment of the war that was for himself alone.

"Find him a nice, damp hole far from sunlight," he says to the eager faces of his men, and goes in to join his Dragoons with a smile—for how can a man so deeply in love keep from smiling?


	5. Runaways and Windowbreakers

[A/N: Zieg's narration, Zieg's less-than-angelic perspective, Charle Frahma being saccharine and calculating, and two new Dragoons. If you get to the end of this and think you know how the great love story of the Dragon Campaign will go, you're probably mistaken. Thanks for the reads, thanks for the reviews, especially Raindog for being hilarious and brilliant and Psi-liloquy for having such amazing things to say.

* * *

RUNAWAYS AND WINDOWBREAKERS

.

Zieg didn't think much of their fourth Dragoon.

They'd had a devil of a time finding him, to begin. The spindly-legged green dragon that he, Belzac, and Shirley dispatched had left them with an even spindlier tusk-mouthed spawn, completely unmanageable, and a dull green stone which refused to spark for any of the warriors and rebel leaders they offered it to. In the end they resorted to walking through Fort Magrad, holding it up and waiting. The dragon's spirit found its desired host at the moment they gave up. Zieg still clung to the hope that it would realize its mistake.

Turns out, it wanted Syuveil. An intellectual, which to Zieg sounded like pincushion: not the sort of man to led armies or threw down tyrants. He was slender, almost delicate, all long limbs and elbows and soft hands. Capable with a lance, by his own report, and had some fencing skill—but at best he was a show fighter in a city full of gap-toothed, blood-spitting warriors. Until now he'd been making himself useful to Diaz's tacticians with some knowledge of Wingly cities and forces. They said he knew a thousand things about chemistry and physics and biology, as well as philosophy and poetry, and composed music (a singer and oboist himself).

On the other hand, the first three Dragoons could barely read a book between them. Personally, Zieg didn't see the use. All the books were written by Winglies anyhow.

"And why," muttered Zieg to Shirley, during the hike back from the marshes in search of the strayed green dragonspawn, "is this fancy pup my fourth Dragoon?"

"He's got to have something we need," she answered calmly, as if reasoning with a child. "Zieg, has it occurred to you yet that the Winglies have lost their patience with Diaz's little revolution? They'll come down hard on us humans soon. Eventually, we'll need a better strategy than just plowing through the middle of them all flash and thunder, hoping the sight of Dragoons rattles them enough that they don't blast us out of the sky."

" 'S worked so far," he grumbled. "And I was talking to Dart here." He patted his vassal dragon's side to prove it.

Indifferent to affection, the red-eyed monster-whose back was now higher than Zieg's head-sneezed. It flapped its furled wings, and in a few bounds was in the air, catching a rising thermal as gracefully as an autumn leaf. Dart was made for soaring, and resented plodding along the ground at the pace of Belzac's comically misnamed Condor.

Shirley, vassal dragon-less and used to walking, laughed. She nudged him to look back at their newest companion.

The green tusked dragon had come up out of the mists as soon as Syuveil approached, snatching him up in mantis-like front claws. The dragon stone had flashed like an emerald, and somewhere in the depths of the monster's unfathomable mind, Syuveil ceased to look like a meal. Now he rode just above its shoulder—_riding it_, the only one of them whose vassal dragon would put up with it for any distance, laughing in pure delight at its ungainly stride.

If they weren't human and dragon, they could have been brothers. Something in the long joints, and the way the dragon was constantly distracted by shiny stones or the critters that darted across its path. Both disappointed him. The thing was plenty large, of course, but he didn't think it could fly. It might lead the human army well enough, but it would never tear Kadessa or Flanvel from the sky.

Belzac, walking in their shadow with a hand on blind Condor's side to guide him, called up to Syuveil in a friendly tone. The faintest twinges of jealousy stirred in Zieg's heart. "Seems to me like naming the thing Feyrbrand is a little hasty," he grumbled. "It's been eating cattails and marsh rats."

"Zieg, my dear, brave, thickheaded, and embarrasingly vain friend-"

"Shirley, the kid doesn't even have any callouses!"

"And I'd never killed a man before you and Belzac and Diaz forced me. Zieg, give Syuveil a chance. I think he'll surprise you."

Zieg bit back a comparison of Shirley and Syuveil. He still hoped the rest of his Dragoons would be rugged warriors, but Shirley'd never given him a reason yet to criticize her. It was a comfort to know that in every battle, he had Belzac at his side and Shirley at his back, covering their assault with a ceaseless rain of white-blazing arrows, and sealing up bloody wounds with hands like starlight. Even when he knew damn well he was being bad-tempered, reckless, and unreasonable, Shirley was patient with him. She wasn't shy and she wasn't cruel either. He understood why Belzac loved her.

On the other hand, if Belzac knew all the impatient, ugly thoughts in his head—

No, he'd never let him see. And dammit, if Belzac and Shirley were going to make _friends _with the kid, Zieg had to put on a good face about it. He sighed. "I'll tell Diaz the kid volunteered to train with the recruits. That should get some healthy bruises in, and maybe some muscle into the deal."

.

When he heard about his 'voluntary' training, Syuveil-who was eerily smooth-faced, almost girlishly good-looking-turned white around the lips and eyes, but went without a word. Coward, Zieg thought. He got a little dark satisfaction out of seeing Syuveil limping back to the increasingly crowded Dragoons' tower with oozing blisters and sore muscles. Better, it turned out that even if Feybrand was earthbound, his Dragoon seemed born for aerial battles-swifter than Zieg himself.

The kid was perceptive, at least. He caught on quick to how watchful Belzac got, like a big mama hen, if he went to Shirley with his injuries. Instead of complaining, he went elsewhere for solace and sympathy. He spent most of their free evenings lying on Feyrbrand's back with a book or that damned oboe. At the least, he kept in line, which was as good as Zieg could ask from such a puny Dragoon, until the day the kid came to him, white-faced again, and blurted out:

"I heard Emperor Diaz wants us to raid one of the flying cities to tell the Winglies to back off from Fort Magrad."

"Yep. We'll be hitting one of the Zenebatos peripheries the day after t-"

"We should go to Ulara."

"What? No." Charle Frahma owned that city: some said the most powerful of all Wingly sorcerers, even if her brother was dictator over Endiness. Human mothers told their brats to eat their porridge or Charle Frahma would make knitting needles out of their little bones. Angering her would meant dead Dragoons and a smoking crater where Fort Magrad stood. Syuveil, with all his time spent among the tacticians, should know that. Zieg screwed up his eyes. "I was pretty certain I gave the orders."

"Ulara," Syuveil repeated, "or you go without me."

Zieg opened his mouth, thought, and shut it again. Syuveil hadn't turned white with fear; that was anger in his eyes. The kid stood with hands on hips and pointy chin jabbing at the air, indifferent to the fact that Zieg could (and was fighting the urge to) break him in half.

Zieg could drag Syuveil to battle, of course-he wouldn't dare hold back then-but this was the sort of bad beginning that lost wars. He couldn't afford mutiny among his Dragoons, not now when the runaway slaves flocked to Magrad in hordes, when the Winglies began to see some real danger in this growing mutiny and get off their asses, when Emperor Diaz called private meetings to talk about building a grand city, a human capitol on the earth to rival Kadessa in the sky.

He gritted his teeth, counted ten ways that it was easier to command a hundred normal men than three Dragoons, and grudgingly told Syuveil, "We'll talk tonight."

That evening, with all four Dragoons crammed in their shared room, Syuveil made his argument. "I understand you think Ulara is too dangerous to raid, Commander Zieg," he began, pressing his fingertips together. "I promise you, I can guide us into Ulara and through it without ever encountering its full power. Only us Dragoons; Charle won't respect a human army. And she's different than her brother, more willing to consider other options. If we impress her, she'll take an interest in us, and we may even win Emperor Diaz an ally."

"How do you figure?"

"When I joined you, I was a fugitive from Ulara. I belonged to Charle-her slave-one of her favorites." Syuveil shrugged at Zieg's sudden twitch. "I'd have told you if you ever asked. I learned everything as a pet in her court."

Zieg glanced around and found no surprise on Shirley's face, not even on Belzac's. Hell, they already knew, and no one had mentioned it to him.

You didn't ask, his conscience reminded him before he could get mad.

He peered hard at the kid, with his pretty face and his strange useless list of talents, just like a rich Wingly heiress might demand from her pet. Not all kinds of slavery meant chains and beatings. Zieg wasn't intentionally a bully, and he fought off a pang of guilt. If Syuveil thought he deserved more sympathy, he should have said something before.

Leaning back against the foot of his bed—there wasn't enough floor space left for table or chairs, between three men and Belzac's insistence that Shirley have her own partition—Zieg crossed his arms and tipped his head back. "Alright, I get it. You want to go pay a visit, all Dragooned up and free, and put dust in her eye. I can work with that, kid, but now isn't the best time..."

"That's not it." Behind his steepled fingers, Syuveil smiled, his attempt at sounding authoritative falling back into the sheepishness Zieg was more used to. "Yes, it would be quite a nice feeling, but I promised I'd come back for someone. There's another slave of Charle's, who needs to be set free."

"A warrior, I hope."

"Sometimes," he answered vaguely, and Zieg rolled his eyes. A family member? Some whining bit of skirt he'd somehow managed to knock up? _Did _Syuveil like skirts? "You'll understand when we get to Charle's court. Just because someone's never fought in battles like you have doesn't mean their skills are useless. You won't be disappointed, commander."

Silence reigned for a few minutes. On Belzac's cot, Shirley bent and picked up a piece from the half-played blackstone game, the one which had been about to win the game for Belzac. Her braid fell over her shoulder and brushed the floor. "I'll go with you, Syuveil," she said.

Belzac, sitting at her feet, turned his head. "Well, Zieg?" he asked quietly. He wouldn't defy his commander, not as long as he still took Zieg for a saint.

"She's pretty," Syuveil added, as if he thought it would help his argument.

.

In the sweltering heat on the day they raided Ulara, in the midst of the giddy, heart-stopping chaos that was zooming through and around and under the arching walkways, pinwheeling through the clouds, at every other instant a hairsbreadth away from getting spitted on a Wingly lance or barbecued by a bolt of magic, wings straining with the speed and the quick banking turns to avoid smashing into a solid wall, when there wasn't time to see or think or hear, only fly, and he'd completely lost track of which way was down, Zieg decided that no woman in all of Endiness could possibly make this madness worthwhile, no matter how pretty.

The two flying dragons, Dart and Condor, had kicked off the mission with a predawn assault on what Syuveil called the far side of the flying city, although Zieg couldn't see the difference. When the Wingly guards were all more or less entangled in the fray, the Dragoons raced up from directly under the city on the other side, flying for as long as they could in the shadows of the suspended courtyards and aqueducts before someone spotted them.

"Follow me!" Syuveil shouted over the wind, voice cracking. They took off after him. Zieg had never flown with someone else's wings and legs and harebrained plans in his way before. He didn't like it.

And Syuveil didn't have a dragon thinking _blood _and _burn _and _tasty Wingly_ in the back of his head, muddling all Zieg's efforts to plan and dodge and rediscover gravity. Feyrbrand was placidly eating a dead sheep somewhere on the earth that lay in one or the other of these directions, and very far down.

Off in the distance, Condor bellowed. Zieg felt Dart's echo more than heard. Syuveil banked sharply, and now the Dragoons were flying along the aerial walkways rather than through them. Pale, shocked Wingly faces blurred past, but these were civilians, not guards, and they leapt out of the way—sometimes off the paths entirely, saved by their humming wings. Zieg prayed quickly that there were no humans in their way.

Something snapped at him as he zoomed past, something greenish that didn't seem like it should have teeth, but no time to look. The tip of one wing clipped what might have been a lamppost—it went by too fast to tell—and for a split second he spiraled straight for the side of a building. Then Belzac's axe handle under his arm hooked him out of it. Zieg reoriented himself and put on a burst of speed to catch up with the jade-green blur leading them.

A fountain ahead, crystal-clear water arcing through the air without visible means, and Syuveil didn't swerve. Zieg threw his hand up to guard his eyes, and blasted doggedly though. It turned to steam around him. Behind him, Shirley yelped when she ran into the cloud he'd left behind.

Hell, this wasn't a raid, this was a damn _blitz_. They hadn't so much as taken a swing at a Wingly yet, and Syuveil seemed to be flying in circles, he may have lived in Ulara but he'd never flown through it before, and _this _was why Zieg made the plans.

The streak of green light veered sharply up, then left. They followed. Suddenly they were racing low across a terrace spiked with pillars that seemed made for bashing Dragoon wings. There were still guards here, in armor that gleaned like mother-of-pearl, and Syuveil was slowing, beating his wings backward. He pointed emphatically at a vast domed window, bigger than some of the houses in Fort Magrad, all of greenish glass.

A flash of yellow light, brighter than the sunlight, burned in the corner of his eye. A Wingly guard finished carving the eerie sign of a spell into the air and pointed at Syuveil. He didn't see.

Bellowing a warning, Belzac streaked past, batting Syuveil out of the way like a dragonfly and taking the strike dead on. It struck his chestplate with a sizzling crack that left Zieg's ears ringing.

Belzac tumbled back head over heels—Zieg's heart stopped beating, the world got small and gray and empty and cold—then his wings flared out, steadying him. He hurled his axe, taking off the Wingly's head and part of the garden wall. Alive again, Zieg took off toward the dome, scattering the remaining guards. He crashed through the green glass like a meteor, the first Dragoon into Charle Frahma's hall.

For that reason, for the rest of the war, Syuveil never quite forgave Belzac for saving his life.

The sudden chill of the great hall smacked the breath out of him, as if Zieg were a weapon hot from the anvil abruptly dropped into water. He gulped air like his lungs were bellows. There were no guards here, only Wingly lords and ladies in silk and brocade, shrinking away from the cascade of broken glass. Everywhere he looked, angular white faces turned up like flowers from a sunless garden to see what the commotion was.

Which was Charle Frahma? Where was the damn kid's little girlfriend?

One of the Wingly men scrawled out a spell and flung it at him. Zieg deflected it with his sword, aware of Shirley flying in behind him. Fat white grubs, he thought, fleeing the sudden sunlight he had brought violently into their den. He tasted delicious blood—no, those were Dart's thoughts.

"Find the old lady!" he called back to Shirley, swooping lower so the magic-adept Winglies wouldn't have such a clear shot.

With a second earshattering crash, Belzac joined them, followed by Syuveil, and all the guards from the terrace hot on their heels. The rest of the dome caved in with musical disaster. Some of the Wingly nobles took flight; some others threw up glowing magical shields to protect themselves from flying glass. Zieg wished they'd all bleed to death, but the guards swarmed them, all lances and spells, and he'd run out of time.

.

"Stop all this nonsense at once."

In all his years, Zieg had never heard a voice like that. It sounded like his mother's had when he was too young to understand that she was weak and fallible and _human__,_ if his mother had also been drinking ambrosia and angel tears every morning and was descended from sirens. A voice like that cut through the chaos and clamor of weapons clashing and spells cracking off every which way, without needing to outshout them. When it was gone, silence fell so fast he thought he'd gone deaf.

"Put down those nasty weapons," it continued, and the Winglies obeyed. Those who had been casting spells let them fizzle out. Zieg's arms twitched without his say-so, as if someone had caught him up on strings like a marionette. He lowered his sword and wriggled a finger in his ear. Distantly, Dart howled again.

"Now, let's have our guests come down and be welcomed like civilized creatures. Please mind the glass; I'm sure it's very sharp."

Now he saw her: a petite little Wingly woman reclining on a divan at the center of the far wall, who hadn't moved when everyone else flew into a panic. He couldn't tell her age—few Winglies, with all their power, let that show—just a sense that she was too old to wear such lurid pink flounces. He waved to his Dragoons (_his _again), and they floated down.

The Wingly woman had prim, pouting features, and spoke as though to unruly children. Her eyes were very cold, and only got colder when she smiled, although the rest of her face stayed all pink-cheeked goodwill. "Ah, you _are_ human under all that dragonish flair after all," she observed. "I suppose those are your beasts tearing up my gardens outside? Your pets?" Zieg's tongue was thick and dry. He couldn't answer.

"I am Charle Frahma," she continued, making a slight dismissive gesture with one finger. "This is my city you have invaded, my streets you have thrown into uproar, and my dome you have destroyed. I'm sure you didn't mean any harm, but this really is quite a mess."

Zieg's ability to speak came limping back. "My name is Zieg Feld, commander of the Dragoons," he announced, then winced at how tinny and grating his voice sounded after Charle's melodious speech. The pervasive hum of Winglies in flight dwindled to nothing. Only his Dragoons remained in the air, holding onto their battle-urge as long as possible. "We come from Emperor Diaz, Miss Frahma."

"Emperor Diaz? Oh, of course. The runaway gang leader." She smiled wider, shaking her head, all patronizing pity. "Surely he doesn't think he has an empire under his belt this soon, does he, Zieggy dear?"

While Zieg choked on the nickname, Charle's icy eyes wandered over the other Dragoons. Compared to her power, Belzac was no better than a snorting bear; Shirley's humble prettiness looked homely, dumpy, faded like winter leaves. Her gaze left each of them feeling ashamed.

"Suvie, is that really you under all that silly armor? Dear boy, what have they done to your hands?" She tsked. "You should never have left me, Syuveil. I'm very disappointed in you. The games of war are beneath your potential. I would have given you a blissful life with me, here, where it's quiet and peaceful. You had all the secrets of the world at your fingertips, and now look at you—fallen in with runaways and window-breakers."

To the kid's credit, Charle's rebuke slid right off him, the barbs missing their mark. All his attention was centered elsewhere. "Rose!" he cried.

Zieg followed his eyes to another Wingly, this one an elderly matron in teal, and beside her a young human woman in pink and purple silks similar to Charle Frahma's. She had rich black hair, like midnight among the pale Winglies, and he couldn't think how he missed seeing her before. In fact, he didn't understand how he could have seen anyone but her.

Without stirring, she captured his eye and kept it. Night waiting to fall must look like her. Even in a crowd of Winglies that left the rest of the humans looking lumpy and deformed by contrast, she was whip-slim, all long leg and narrow hip and swan neck. In the hollow of her throat a pulse flickered, quick and light. She held a rapier at the ready, unaffected by Charle's command, and the tip didn't waver even with her breathing.

Rose, he thought.

Rose. The name cut through his mind until it had carved itself over all his waking thoughts and future dreams.

At Syuveil's shout, she came to life. With a dancer's deliberation, she pivoted, extending the slender arm that held the rapier. The point came lightly to rest on the breastbone of the elderly Wingly woman. Zieg couldn't see her face, only the long smooth shining veil of hair.

Charle must have noticed, but didn't react, and the other Winglies took her cue. The matron only raised her hands, cautiously, to show she was harmless. "Tell me, Zieggy," Charle said, dismissing Syuveil, "Why did your little emperor send you here to destroy my windows? Is he trying to declare war on me?"

Zieg's hand shot up on its own, pointing to the black-haired woman. "We came for her," he declared huskily.

That ruffled Charle's composure for the first time. A buzz of dismay went through the Wingly audience. A lance clinked against the floor. The only human in her court, dressed in Charle's own clothes—Rose had to be her prized possession.

Charle stood. Wingly women didn't have the same height that Wingly men lorded over humans, but the sorceress was _tiny_. Even if Zieg let go of his Dragoon wings and stood on his own two feet, she wouldn't quite come to his ribs. She gave Zieg a quick, searching glance before turning to Rose. He didn't care. She'd lost her fascination for him. It didn't matter now that they were outnumbered two hundred to one, that Belzac had saved Syuveil this time when he had always saved Zieg before, that Shirley was breaking his best friend's heart. If he had this black-haired woman in his arms, he knew Kadessa itself would burn like paper in front of him.

"Well, Rosie sweetheart," Charle said, ever so sweetly, "what would you like to do? Are you going to abandon me like Syuveil and go off with this robber?"

Rose lifted her face. Zieg saw nothing but large, endless eyes, darker than moonless nights.

"Yes."

Charle sighed, then gave a tinkling little laugh and folded her hands. The breathless tension dissipated. "Human love is fickle," she remarked to no one in particular. "Rosie, please be careful not to prick Miata; she's only ever been kind to you. Suvie, if you wouldn't mind, you ought to let your new master know that he will be hearing from me. If he is to steal away all of my favorites, I suppose I must make sure he doesn't damage them in his little war."

"Be careful, Zieg," Belzac rumbled in his ear. Blood fanned down his face from a deep cut above his ear.

"Be careful with her, Zieggy," Charle Frahma echoed a beat behind him. "You won't find another like her, no, not if you lived a thousand years." She glanced up at the shattered dome. "Oh dear, your little dragons are still ruining my flower beds, aren't they? You should take them back to their pens now, or else I would ask you all to tea. I do hope they haven't hurt anyone."

Sheathing his sword, Zieg flew down to Rose. Those dark eyes watched him descend, keeping her rapier at Miata's heart. He reached for her hand, wondering how much she weighed, whether she was really made of twilight. She lowered the blade at last. Her fingers felt like ice—calloused, unlike Syuveil's.

Zieg grinned.

"Hold on tight," he said, bent, and hooked his free arm under her knees. She held onto his neck, and those slim pale arms had fighter's muscle underneath. The embers in his soul flared up, fearless, exultant. Zieg stretched out his wings and shot through the shattered glass dome, into the pale blue sky, wrapped in a halo of flame. The Dragoons sped after him, four bright bolts of lightning. Rose's hair pressed cold and black and silky-smooth under his cheek, and _damn _she smelled good. He would have raided a hundred Wingly enclaves for her, if he'd only known.


	6. One Of These Days

[A/N: Snippets of conversations and life in Fort Magrad, interspersed with the progress of human liberation. Falling in love with Rose is going to be more difficult than Zieg thinks.]

* * *

ONE OF THESE DAYS

.

Summer, and the world was made for Zieg. The sun came up each morning, shining like a big old grin on crops that went straight into human bellies, free ones. It went down again each evening in red and orange banners over Fort Magrad, without no damn flying cities tangling up the cloudy streamers. In between, it burned the mildew out of the Dragoons' tower and sent trumpet vines spiraling up the cracked gray stones. He had two dragons in the courtyard below, one in the rafters, and four Dragoons under his command and his alone.

And Rose.

.

"Zieg, I'm pretty sure you're scaring her."

.

With her Dragoon eyes, Shirley could look out on an approaching platoon of Wingly warriors, still three miles away, and say how they were armed and armored and which way to dish them up. Belzac and Condor together started churning up and rearranging large stones, which seemed like the worst game of dominos imaginable until he (and Diaz) realized they were reinforcing the walls of Magrad. Then they carved out a long switchback road to make easier travel for the humans who came to them, now half a dozen every day.

They told Zieg that he grinned like a madman when the dragonfire was in his eyes.

Around Syuveil, things were still tense, as if there were a dog growling nearby that Zieg just couldn't hear. He wasn't sure which of them was the dog. The kid had turned out useful, though. Syuveil, whose memory was like a bear trap, drew up charts of all the Wingly cities he knew, and as a Dragoon, developed a knack of twisting the wind around him in a way that deflected missiles and even spells.

.

"Syuveil, I don't care what you're testing, you can't keep a mouse in the tower. The rest of us have to live here! Is that my sock?"

.

Charle Frahma followed through on her threat to visit Emperor Diaz. He saw her entourage off looking a little older than before, but announced that the Wingly sorceress had decided to support the free human settlement (not militarily, of course.) The next day, he took the Dragoons and a few of his commanders and advisors to the hills above Magrad. An old quarry lay there, the kind that Belzac had grown up in, abandoned by the Winglies two centuries back. The stones glimmered with mica.

"This is where we'll build our city," Diaz announced.

"Will the old lady be helping?"

"A little. It won't be another Wingly city, though, but one for humans to work and live in. We can't afford to snub an ally now."

"Once upon a time you'd have spit on taking Wingly help."

"Once upon a time, we didn't have any allies. The spitting was purely hypothetical."

"Damn."

.

Syuveil spent a week sleeping in Feyrbrand's nest, and came out with sketches and plans for Emperor Diaz. The city would rise up along the bowl of the quarry, using the existing levels, and in the center—here's where Charle's magic would come in, although the kid claimed it would support itself in the end—flying buttresses would suspend a throne room for Diaz.

Diaz handed it back with seven towers sketched in above it. For his Dragoons, he said. Via the library at Ulara, they had come up with that total. Zieg guessed his thinking: if they built seven towers, then they would _have _to come up with seven Dragoons eventually. Diaz added that if someone did succeed in subjugating the Divine Dragon that one old poem described, locked somewhere in the bowels of the earth, then he could have Diaz's crown and the whole city for his parlor.

Rose peered over Zieg's shoulder at the plans. Her hair fell like cool black water over his wrist. He draped an arm over her shoulders and imagined a whole flock of Dragoons, a bevy—a brood—a gaggle—a nest—all bright-winged and terrifying, all at his command.

"Is this the city name in the corner? Vellweb? What does that even mean?"

"I don't know. I dreamed of it one night when Feyrbrand was creaking in my ear. Turn the map this way. The city design sort of looks like a vellweb, doesn't it?"

"Kid, you're addled in the head."

"Maybe you'll prefer Diaz's foray into nomenclature. He said, "If I'm an Emperor, then where we're standing must be my empire." He named it Gloriano."

Gloriano, Gloriano—it rang in the mind like wedding bells.

.

"Shirley hugged me yesterday and told me I was the truest friend she'd ever known."

"So, no luck then?"

.

And Rose. Her dark eyes, so serious and intense no matter where she turned them, reminded him of a child's whenever he caught her off guard. He tied himself in knots to make her smile, because it was so rare (and so maddeningly sweet) that she did. She wasn't as curvy as he liked, and didn't laugh as much as he liked, and she was unimaginably perfect. He'd have made her his wife, made her his own in a heartbeat, if the others hadn't suggested—strongly—that he give Charle's stolen pet a little time.

From the very first day, Zieg had wonderful plans for her. "This is my dark Dragoon," he said, only half joking, when he introduced her to Emperor Diaz.

Diaz kissed her hand, but he focused on Zieg. He seemed a little put out that Zieg had abandoned the Zenebatos plan, although his eyes had gleamed when they described the lightning raid on Ulara. "I didn't think you had killed another yet, commander."

"We haven't. But she'll be the one."

Forget Shirley's reluctance, nevermind the fluke of Syuveil's calling; he _knew _Rose would fly on golden wings someday, as firmly as if he'd dreamed it.

And he did dream of her—almost nightly—until the Dragoons' quarters became far, far too small and public. He spent restless predawn hours, just listening to her breathe on the other side of Shirley's curtain. She mesmerized him. Maybe Charle Frahma had put a spell on him. If Zieg didn't promise himself that one day she'd soar at his side, he'd forfeit the war through sheer distracted longing.

"I'd be a good lover to her," he argued once, on a private walk with Belzac.

In all their years of friendship, Belzac had only spoken up to curb Zieg's impulses a half-dozen times. He stood his ground. "A lover isn't what a newly freed slave needs," he insisted. "And you can't afford to give your heart away right now. We're at war for the whole world. We need you."

The word 'hypocrite' was on his tongue, but Zieg held it back. Fights didn't appeal to him like they did before the Ulara raid. With Rose, he'd become giddy—stupid as a boy whose heart beat fast for the first time. He was even willing to be nice to Syuveil, except that somehow his friendliness got turned into something awkward and a little prickly somewhere between his intentions and Syuveil's flat, slightly sardonic stare. And the slow guilty ache of watching his best friend's eyes follow someone else became lighter, easier to bear.

Hell, if Belzac could turn faithless for a woman, Zieg had every right to do the same.

.

"Soa _damn _it, Syuveil, the mice!"

.

They destroyed an entire chain of teleporters one morning, widening the perimeter around Diaz's little empire, and came home to find out that Rose had left the Dragoons' quarters. Zieg found her walking through the streets of Fort Magrad, oblivious or indifferent to the stares that followed her. She gazed around at the dirt streets, the stray dogs, the human children who ran around underfoot, wearing the expression of someone listening to a foreign language.

Zieg picked her up, swung her around, and carried her home. "Don't wander off like that!" he scolded. "Someone's likely to steal you away from me."

The other Dragoons had begun an early supper in their tower. Zieg plopped down in an empty space and pulled Rose onto his lap. "Look what I found lost in the weeds! We'll have to put a fence around our garden."

Rose, as ever, lowered her chin and tolerated his outburst of affection. She didn't resist, but neither did she relax. Zieg had never met a woman so simultaneously self-controlled and shy. It was charming.

Shirley had a different opinion. Setting her bowl of mountain clam stew aside, she leaned in with a little half-frown. "Rose, honey, you know that he's only joking, right? You're free to go anywhere you like."

Zieg copied her frown. "Of course she knows that."

"You sounded a little like Charle," Syuveil interjected from behind the safety of his bowl. "Teasing to cover over threats."

"I'm nothing like the old bat!"

"Why do we talk about Rose as if she can't speak for herself?" Belzac asked quietly. Zieg pretended he hadn't heard.

Coming around the table, Shirley knelt beside Zieg's stool. She put her hand over Rose's, who glanced at her warily. "Listen, Rose, no one here has any right to tell you what to do. You can come and go, or leave us completely, and no one will punish you. Do as you like. You don't have to put up with this bonehead if he bothers you, either."

"Shirley, you're making me sound like a villain."

She shot him a look—the first time Shirley ever looked mad at him. "You're among friends here, Rose," she went on, relentlessly kind. "You're not a slave or a pet or anything you don't want to be."

Rose sat up straighter on his knee. Zieg kept his arm around her waist, glaring daggers at Shirley. "I understand," Rose said. She spoke up so rarely that he always forgot how clear her voice was, with just a faint accent he didn't recognize. "May I have a bowl?"

"Of course." Belzac ladled out a helping for her, picking out the best bits. "Careful, it's still hot."

She took it as if heat meant nothing to her. Reluctantly, Zieg let her stand. Rose pivoted smoothly on her toe and slammed her knee into his groin.

The world went vomit-colored and spotty. Zieg curled into a ball and fell sideways off the stool. Through his blurred vision, Rose gazed down at him expressionlessly, holding out something in her hand. Soa almighty, that's not even _fair_, Zieg thought despairingly, before mountain clam stew rained down over him.

.

Syuveil found him later, huddled in a corner of the dragons' courtyard and trying to die with a little dignity. "I thought Dart lived on the roof," the kid said, and Zieg could _hear _him smirking.

Zieg forced his neck muscles to relax enough that he could scowl up at him. "Cccccouldn't mmmmmake the stairs," he forced out through gritted teeth. "Laugh wwwwhile you ccccan."

Maybe he was less intimidating while nauseous and emasculated. The burning fires of hatred he imagined consuming Syuveil must not be hot enough. The kid dusted off a place for his skinny ass and sat beside him. "I didn't come to harass you. Here's a sack of ice and some whiskey. Do with them whatever seems best to you."

After a few minutes with the ice clamped between his legs and the flask between his teeth, Zieg reconsidered how soon he needed a tombstone. A few of his future children must have survived. He jerked his head at Syuveil. "If I had medals to dish out, kid, you just earned one."

"Please don't get too fond of me, commander. I wouldn't know what to do with myself."

"Very funny."

Syuveil took the flask back, wiped the mouth with his sleeve, and took a sip. Immediate color flooded his smooth cheeks. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "Rose did the same thing to me once, when we were a little younger and I thought she needed someone to watch over her. Except then it was a dagger instead of stew."

Zieg squinted at him. He hadn't thought the kid was old enough to fall in love, much less with someone like Rose. A little bit of love still hung around him, enough to make him risk Charle's wrath to set her free. Now they were equals, in a way—Rose's rejected suitors.

Then it dawned on Zieg: the whole time that he'd been toughening Syuveil up, trying to make him into a warrior or kill him in the process, Syuveil had been waiting for Zieg himself to trip up. Now he had, most spectacularly, and the prickly half-hidden hostility evaporated.

Well, as long as the kid didn't make a habit of it.

With a grunt, Zieg sat up and held out his hand. Syuveil gripped it firmly enough, even if his fingers were long and spindly. "I think we'll get along fine, now," Zieg said.

.

By sundown he could walk in a straight line again. He stalked stiffly back through the Dragoon quarters. Shirley caught sight of him and smothered what was unmistakably a laugh in her sleeve. Belzac looked awkward. Rose sat in the aperture, elegant in the twilit breeze; she ignored him.

That was fine. She'd come around. He'd dreamed it.

The flask of whiskey had run dry at some point, and his head was buzzing pleasantly. He waved at Belzac to say he was fine and teetered up the crumbling stair to Dart's roost above the rafters. Zieg's vassal dragon wasn't as tolerant or affectionate as Feyrbrand, but he loved him anyway. Firstborn of their kind, each of them, even if Rose apparently thought Zieg was an asshole and Dart ate boots.

Right now, Dart was sleeping: a great big bat-winged lump on the roofline, almost invisible in the dark except for the ember-glow in his chest. He'd be too big for the roof soon. Zieg crawled up to join him where the night wind cooled his burning face. He dragged one wing aside to climb in against the warmth of Dart's heart. It beat in time with his own. He leaned his head against the dragon's side, catching flickers of Dart's dreams—all bloodlust and need. For a moment, he remembered the first battle, the first moment that he knew that his dreams were all going to come true.

The world would be his someday soon, and the trumpet vines themselves were going to sing.


	7. Patricide

[A/N: You won't believe this, but I never stopped thinking about or working on FD over the past year. I'm sorry it took so long to get a solid chapter down. I intend to keep going-without another yearlong break in chapters.

Meet my Damia: traumatized, brittle, dissociated, stronger than she seems. This chapter is rather uglier and squickier than the ones that came before, so be warned. She has a very different narrative style than the the chapters so far (Belzac, Diaz, and Zieg.) Next chapter introduces Syuveil as a narrator, and we'll see Rose become the Dark Dragoon. Thanks for reading and for all your reviews so far!]

* * *

**PATRICIDE**

.

_It is no night to drown in._

[Sylvia Plath]

.

.

SOON, LOVE, SOON

.

The song ends.

The guests applaud.

Damia is deaf to their approval. She sits beside the vivarium where her mother is a prisoner. Her throat is painful and raw. The sweet echo of her voice, chiming through the arches of her lord's private lounge, has little in common with the ache she feels. She is detached, drifting, isolated.

"Well sung!"

She doesn't react to the praise. It is about her but it is meant for her lord. He sits smug and pleased in the center of the small throng and sips his wine. He will give her a treat later for the song and for behaving herself well.

His guests are a dozen Winglies of insecure new wealth and no notable lineage, like himself. They are other gamemasters of the Kadessa Coliseum, beast hunters and orchid smugglers and collectors of the bizarre. They cluster together like flies, rejecting those of lesser status the same way that the noble classes reject them. They are flatterers and backstabbers and he likes none of them.

Damia knows this because he tells her so.

She doesn't know why he still invites them to drink and dine at his house, a palatial offshoot of Kadessa's outer rim. His moods are mercurial but she prefers her lord alone. He never makes her sing when they are alone. He leaves her mother alone.

She presses her palm against the cold glass of the vivarium and peers through the water.

"The Archangel smiles on you too much, Ulhurel," one of the guests says. "She's a gem."

Her lord laughs. He throws his head back the way human slaves do. "Don't envy me my little treasures!" he exclaims, meaning the opposite. "The sow made me work for that one. You'll see what I mean." His guests chuckle.

Like the slow blooming of a seabed flower, Damia's mother appears on the other side of the tank. Cuttlefish stripes color her flanks maroon, rippling down to the flickering fan of indigo and green that is her tail. Spine-edged fins, brilliant with poison, trace the graceful lines of hips and forearms. She flattens a webbed, claw-fingered hand against the side of the glass, mirroring Damia's. Her blue lips part, baring razor-sharp teeth in a smile of greeting. Her black eyes gleam.

Damia curls her knees against her narrow chest. She wants to slip away into the water and her mother's world. They have the same ocean-dark hair. It hangs in dry ragged curls to Damia's chin and floats about her mother's head in a tangle of seaweed fronds.

The resemblance between them, though, is mainly cosmetic. Her lord had no interest in wasting his genetic material on a child indistinguishable from her monstrous co-parent. Instead of a mermaid's powerful tail, Damia has slim white legs. She has small membranes between fingers and toes, and loose flesh at hip and elbow that unfurls into vestigial indigo fins, lacking spines or poison. Her face and body are filigreed with iridescent scales, placed by a Wingly birthcrafter's sense of aesthetics rather than by function.

They gave her delicately webbed spines where a Wingly's ears would be, a parody of her mother's battle-crest.

They gave her the white needle teeth.

What they withheld were the gills that should have let her live independent of her lord's airy world. They left her deaf and mute to the underwater resonances and the frequencies that are the language of the merfolk. She can speak only her lord's language, not her mother's, and sing with the strange huskiness of an imperfectly formed throat.

In silence, Damia leans her cheek against the glass. She closes her eyes. Her mother lays a kiss on the opposite side.

One of the guests whistles for her attention. "Never mind the merm, pretty thing. Come sit on my lap and I'll give you some wine."

"She doesn't eat our foods," Ulhurel says mildly, which gives Damia permission to stay where she is.

"Mistaken her for an actual daughter, have you?"

"Hardly." He smiles and rubs his thumb over his lips. "But she _is_ mine—my property, and mine to withhold as I please."

Her mother sees the furrow of anxiety between Damia's brows. She thumps her web-fingered hand against the glass. _Come here_, that means. Damia shakes her head. Her lord would punish them both.

Ulhurel reclines on one of the divans, two-thousand-year-old antiques he took from the estate of a bankrupt (and promptly deceased) patron of the Coliseum. He is always a little unlike and apart from the men and women he brings home to impress. His hands are a little more calloused than other Winglies', his expressions a little less detached as he shifts between a dozen false faces. Damia shares his rust-red irises. They never linger in one place long enough to risk making eye contact.

He is well known, but he is neither powerful nor popular. He hasn't told her this, but still she knows. She sees more than he thinks.

"It's the damnedest thing," he says to his guests. "For the first five years, the scientists kept her in the Birth City to perfect her, make sure she wasn't going to have seizures or heart failure or some such. When I finally took her home with me, the sow went into a frenzy. She'd never even held the girl, but she utterly lost her senses when she saw her. She wouldn't calm down until I put Damia into the water with her."

"Weren't you concerned that she would damage the child? After all the work you put into her?"

"Oh, no. Merms are fairly simple creatures. She behaves differently when she means to tear something into shreds. You'll see," he repeats.

Damia remembers. It is a clear memory because it is the first that did not have to do with smooth, green-lit corridors, needles and small sharp knives and the crackle of magic on her skin. The mother she had never known, whose name she never would, drew her down into the cold water and tried to speak to her. Damia remembers the stricken look when she realized that the blood of her blood and flesh of her flesh could neither hear nor speak her language. She still feels the agony of love and despair radiating from her.

Ulhurel is explaining his reasoning for making her the way he did. "I didn't want the sow giving her ideas."

"But look. They're still close."

"Oh, certainly. They have a… an animal affection for each other." He raises his voice, demanding Damia's attention: "But she can't speak, can she, Damia?"

"No, Lord," Damia whispers.

"Simply another fucking animal."

"Yes, Lord."

Damia gazes at her mother. She traces circles on the glass. She mouths words she believes her mother has learned to recognize: _I love you._

Ulhurel continues to banter with his guests. Damia is not required to interact with them this time. She is rarely allowed so much time with her mother. She revels in it. They are not alone, of course, but Ulhurel would never let them be truly alone. Damia is his pet and the mermaid is his trophy and their connection to one another is negligible. That is how he thinks. So Damia is quiet and behaves well and he lets her sit in his lounge with his guests.

She gazes through the glass at her mother, drinking in the sight of her. She can never have enough. Someday they will be together and Ulhurel will not be able to pull them apart. Damia believes this. She believes that her mother thinks the same.

But that day is far away.

"Well, enough of music." Ulhurel's voice makes Damia freeze. She knows what is to come. "Shall we move on with the evening's entertainment?"

He rises. Damia's mother recoils from the glass and vanishes into the depths of the vivarium. It is never deep enough, though. Damia bites her lip hard. She stays by the glass as if she can save her mother by staying. Ulhurel will never allow it. He snaps his fingers. Two of his slaves, a pair of Minintos, take Damia's arms. They are stronger than her even if they are the same height. She digs her heels into the floor. One of them whispers, "She can see you."

If Damia fights, then her mother will fight. Then she will be hurt.

Damia stops resisting. She doesn't look back at the vivarium, where her lord has taken a long hooked pole and is searching through the dark water with it. She doesn't cry out. She lets the Minintos lead her to her place, a gated alcove attached to Ulhurel's own chamber. They lock her in.

The Minintos are careful around her because she is Ulhurel's favorite. They dare not be either too kind or too cruel. They dare not trust her. They have bonds among themselves that she does not share, just as human slaves form families and the Gigantos remember their clan names even if the Winglies use them only for breeding purposes. Damia is alone. She is like no one in the world.

The Minintos leave. One will bring her supper later, still bloody, while Ulhurel is occupied. He is a brutal man but he has a weak stomach where the eating of flesh is concerned.

In Damia's alcove is a fountain and a shallow pool. Ulhurel makes her use biped furniture while with him, but chairs and beds make her uncomfortable. She feels exposed. She is safest in the water.

She lies in the pool, head tipped back so that her mouth and nose remain clear. The water holds her up like her mother's arms.

In her mother's world she would be crippled, but not helpless. The cobalt depths of the sea do not hold the same deaths for her as they would for her lord or his other slaves. She will never drown in salt water. She has the sea mammal's ability to seal her nostrils against the flood, even if she cannot breathe beneath the waves. With the unfurling of the membranes on her arms and legs, she can outswim any human. Held up against the merfolk, though, she is clumsy and slow. The large predators of the sea would make her an easy meal. But Damia's world has always been full of predators.

Her mother is Ulhurel's personal toy. She is also his champion in the Coliseum. She is swift and deadly with javelin and knife, tooth and spine and claw. Sometimes, when he is feeling indulgent, Ulhurel allows Damia to watch while he brings various sea creatures to the tank for her to hunt or to be hunted by.

He does not let Damia participate. "I don't want you blooded," he told her once. "I don't want you getting a taste for it."

Damia hugs her thin arms around herself. She wants this to be the time that her mother rises up from her tank to kill Ulhurel and all his guests. She wants the air and the sea to invert so that her mother can hunt her lord as he chokes and drowns. Her imagination is not strong enough to maintain the dream long. She knows that tomorrow there will be bloodstains on the edge of the vivarium.

.

THE COLISEUM

.

Damia is thirteen years old when Ulhurel brings her to the Coliseum with him for the first time. A treat for good behavior, she thinks first. It is like him to reward her with the sight of her mother.

But that is not his reason.

"A surprise for all the feathered fools," he says. "I'll have two monsters in the ring today—either one of them a champion." Damia says nothing. The sudden wary widening of her eyes amuses him. He smiles and runs a fingertip down her nose. "Not you, Damia. Not yet." He won't tell her more.

Ulhurel has other entrants for the bloody arena: wild beasts and monsters rather than human slaves. The captive mermaid is his prize. He claims to have better than even odds in any aquatic match. Damia has seen her mother tear apart a pod of seawolves with just an obsidian knife. She is lethally quick with her poison-barbed fins. She is also graceful, a fuchsia flower undergoing a dozen blooming springtimes in the space of a second. When Damia watches her deadly dance through the water, her heart constricts with love and longing.

Damia loves watching her mother prepare for the arena—all but the last part, when Ulhurel binds her hands with magic to keep her from attacking until she reaches the arena. Her mother sits on the tiled rim of the vivarium to don her enameled armor. Ulhurel's craftsmen made it for her, using her own merfolk-made gear as a model. Where that had come from, and when it had been used, Damia doesn't know. Her mother cannot tell her.

Damia helps with the buckles and straps. Out of the water, her mother's hair hangs heavy and dripping to her hips. Her damp skin glistens like foam.

Damia fumbles one of the vambraces, shaped to compliment rather than restrict the flaring of fins. It tumbles into the water. At a smile, she dives after it, plunged briefly into her mother's world. It is silent and welcoming.

She finds the vambrace quickly but lingers in the deep. She peels out of her tunic and lets her small fins expand. For a little while, she pretends that she is her mother, floating beautifully in an incomprehensible weightless darkness. Too soon she runs out of air. She surfaces.

Something has happened. Ulhurel has come over to the vivarium. He has his fist in her mother's hair. The mermaid's eyes are shut.

Damia treads water. "Come out and get dressed," her lord orders. As she obeys, he gives her mother a shake and lets her go.

Her mother catches Damia by the ankle as she passes. She pulls her down into her arms. She holds her close enough to crush her. The spell that binds her is already flickering around her wrists.

"Damia," Ulhurel says. An edge enters his voice. Mother and daughter part. Damia still feels the ghostly imprint of her mother's racing heart against her cheek.

.

Several aquatic battles are planned for the day's entertainment. The whole city of Kadessa has been moved. Its new trajectory takes it far away from land. It hovers just a few meters above the surface of the waves, so that the Coliseum can be transformed into a vast pool.

Ulhurel tells her so.

"Smell the salt in the air, Damia? That's the sea."

The sea, where her mother's people live.

Her mother was taken away into the combatants' stalls when they arrived. She will not receive her weapons until her turn to fight has come. Those are Ulhurel's orders. He doesn't trust her.

He stands on a floating platform with the day's other gamemasters. His arms are folded. He smiles for the throngs of Winglies crowding into the Coliseum. Damia's ears ring with the buzz of wings and flying platforms jostlingfor position. The crowds make her knees weak. She sits at his feet and shivers in the blue and green silk he chose for her.

Ulhurel bends down. His lips are next to her finned ears. "The man in black and grey there is Melbu Frahma, the ruler of Endiness. Even he will see my triumph."

All Damia sees is a white thumbnail of a face as it turns away. She does not care. She only wants to see her mother be beautiful and violent and brave so that they can leave again.

The audience platforms scale up the sides of the Coliseum like the inside of a giant bowl. The arena is filled with seawater. Broad-winged white birds swoop and soar overheard. Their cries are sad. In the center a tethered raft floats like a crust of bread. A few human gladiators are already fighting there. One falls dead. His blood clouds the water for a few feet around the raft. One of the remaining three grabs another, kisses him violently, and throws him down.

A private dais detaches from the uppermost tier of the Coliseu. It whirs down to where Ulhurel and the other gamemasters wait on the edge of the arena. "Charle Frahma," someone whispers. The gamemasters bow or curtsey. On a little chair in the middle of the dais sits a Wingly with rosy cheeks and flouncing silk skirts. A little silver crown is in her hair. A gamemaster's banner flaps above the dais.

"Sorceress Frahma," Ulhurel says. His smile is fixed but Damia knows he is unhappy. "I was unaware that you took part in our little games."

"Oh, violence is so distasteful," the tiny Wingly murmurs. When she smiles, her eyes almost disappear. They are cold and insincere and remind Damia of Ulhurel's eyes. "But when I heard that you were entering an actual dragon, I decided I simply must see for myself. Tell me, Hulie, how _did_ you train the horrid thing?"

"There is no taming a dragon," he snaps. "There is only pointing it in the direction one wishes it to wreak destruction."

Now Damia understands. Her lord is out of sorts because she has ruined his great surprise. A dragon and her mother. Either one a champion, he said.

"Oh my, how grim." Charle sighs. "I see you have your two entrants back to back, though, Hulie dear—the second to fight the winner of the previous match. I suppose you know there is a chance of your second entrant having to fight the dragon itself?"

Damia feels very cold. Ulhurel smiles wider. "I'm rather planning on it. No matter the outcome, the survivor of the sixth match will become exponentially more valuable. My fortune is made."

Charle's pale brow creases. "The fifth and sixth matches, then? Oh dear, oh dear… I'm afraid I may have placed my entrant in rather a dangerous position."

Ulhurel laughs in her face. "I hope you aren't too attached!"

"Oh, yes," Charle agrees softly, "but I have a handful of others like him." Her eyes move to Damia, who is still at Ulhurel's feet. "But who is this? She can't be your famous mermaid, she's so precious!"

Proudly Ulhurel strokes Damia's hair. "My champion's heir. I had her made for me in Deningrad about fourteen years ago."

"What a pretty little thing," Charle coos. "Come here, my dear! I won't bite you."

Ulhurel nods. Damia obediently climbs over to the dais. Charle's attendants offer a helping hand. Charle strokes her face, her arms, her fins. Her hands are icy cold and as soft as powder. Damia endures the caresses.

"Be careful, Hulie. I might want to take this darling poppet home with me."

"Catch your own mermaid to diddle," he answers smilingly.

Shocked mutters zing between those Winglies within earshot. They are offended. Charle's composure never wavers. "I believe you have already filled that niche," she says graciously. "But, by your leave, I will keep this little one with me for the duration of the matches. I lost my own sweet pet just a little while ago, and I miss her terribly."

The humans on the raft are gone. They left only stains. Those vanish too when a Wingly overseer zooms past. The Coliseum is nothing if not clean. Ulhurel's lounge is the same way. The blood never stays long.

The second match begins: two naked human women, armed with swords, versus a Gigantos with a club. Damia sits on Charle's lap as bidden. She wants to see her mother. The talk of the dragon makes her unhappy. She has never heard of one in the arena. She has never heard of one being hunted or captured. They are old and terrible things.

One of Charle Frahma's attendants is a pretty human youth. He is tall and slim and wears a green stone like a drop of sap on his breast. He crouches so that he is on Damia's level. His smile is gentle. He gives her a little hard candy. She takes it to be polite, but it turns her stomach.

"Did he really…"

"That's revolting." The other attendants are discussing her lord over her head. "Even worse than with humans."

"I have heard of certain Winglies misusing their slaves, but to have a _child_ by one…"

"Absolutely vile."

"Are you excited about the match?" the young man asks Damia. His smile has thinned during the conversation.

Damia pretends that she does not understand. His smile ends. He pats her hand. Damia waits for her mother.

"Now let us see what will happen," Charle Frahma says. She directs Damia's attention to the arena. A single human is swimming out to the raft. He pulls himself dripping out of the water and shakes his golden mane dry. He wears only leather armor and carries a sword slung over his back. She sees no opponent.

The dragon, Damia thinks. It will eat this men in two bites with a third for the sword. Then it will kill her mother.

A gate at the far side of the arena slides open. Only its top rung is visible above the surface. Nothing appears. Damia squints and sees the ripple in the water. The man on the raft sees it, too. He pivots slowly to keep facing it. He takes the sword from his back and throws the scabbard aside.

When the dragon erupts from the water on the opposite side of the arena, Damia gasps with everyone else. It has a long arrowhead skull that weaves back and forth like a cobra. The golden-haired human throws himself flat to avoid its sudden strike. It plunges into the water beyond him, followed by what looks to Damia like a mile of sinuous cobalt-scaled flank. The man barely dodges the whip crack of its tail at the end. The raft looks suddenly very small and fragile.

The dragon seems too big to exist. It mesmerizes.

Damia's mother will have to fight this thing.

"I should have invited Diaz," Charle remarks to her young human. "He would love to see this with his own eyes for once, don't you think, Suvie?"

The boy says nothing. His green eyes are locked on the flooded arena. Like Damia, he does not breathe.

The man has scored a lucky strike against its endless side. The luck is that it did not smash him at once, because his sword cannot penetrate its scales. It jabs at him, knifelike, and he fends it away with frantic swings of his sword. It is like watching a mouse fighting a tiger.

The dragon churns the water. Waves slop over the side of the raft and threaten to swamp it. The man reels. Long blue coils wrap around the beams and splinter them like toothpicks. He escapes being crushed only to tumble into the foaming waves. The sword is useless now.

"Careful, Zieg," the young man beside Damia whispers. Charle is indifferent to the fate of her champion. Damia glances toward her lord. His face shines with glee. Damia's stomach twists. She shuts her eyes. She does not want to see the man's death because it will be her mother's, too.

The crowd roars. The man's struggle must have ended.

But the roar goes on. It is not a cheer. She cracks her eyes open, but she does not understand what she sees.

There are flames burning in the midst of the water. The dragon retreats from a shape too blindingly bright to make out. The man flies. He is red and gold light as bright as the sun. He strikes and strikes and strikes again and dragon blood spatters across the first row of the audience.

The water boils.

The dragon sinks down. The water darkens.

Ulhurel is on his feet, shouting, but he makes no sound.

Charle's boy is grinning so broadly his face might split. Charle herself only smiles contentedly.

The burning man chases the sinking dragon and he thrusts his arm into its gaping jaws and wrenches something out that must be its brain. The Coliseum guards take to the air to surround him. A blaze of green magic erupts from the place where Ulhurel pointed to the ruler of all Endiness. The human who is more than a human is faster. He bursts into the sky like a rocket and they cannot keep pace with him. The heat of his fire sweeps across the audience.

Damia slides from Charle's lap and scrambles to the edge of the dais, between the legs of the Wingly's attendants. She looks for her mother. She wants only her mother. She does not care about burning men or dragons or any other monster they can place before her. But she cannot see her mother and she cannot see her and she cannot see her.

In the shadow of the blood-spattered arena walls, though, a tiny fearful creature streaks through the water. It searches for an escape. It is still soft from its birth in the corpse of the dead dragon. It finds the grate where its progenitor entered its last battlefield and it claws at the bars.

On the other side, a mermaid waits with ocean-dark hair for her own war. She looks at the frail and feral creature and their cry for the sea is the same. The mermaid looks into its alien eyes. Her reflection looks back.

That is why the mermaid kills the guard who stands by the grate, and she lets the newborn dragon free. It swims through the channels of the flooded Coliseum. It reaches the sea. It is free.

.

HER MOTHER'S DAUGHTER

.

"—waiting for the next match, in the tunnel below the arena—"

"—it wasn't a pseudo-dragon, it was—"

"—straight out into the ocean—"

"—never seen him so angry."

Damia lies in her pool, curled like a prawn with her arms crossed tight over her stomach. It aches. All she has eaten is the piece of candy that Charle Frahma's pretty human boy gave her. It feels bad inside of her.

The trickle of water from the fountain feels like her mother's fingers combing her hair. Half of her face is submerged. She breathes shallowly through the upper side of her mouth so that the still water is not disturbed. She is trying to drown the half of her that belongs to the upper world so that only her mother's daughter will remain.

Both red eyes are fixed on the gate of her alcove. The vertical horizon of water lies between her furrowed brows. It warps the image she sees. When she blinks she sees the dragon bursting out of the flooded arena, the flames around the red-and-gold human, the dragon falling and falling and falling back into the bloody water. When she breathes she hears the way it shrieked, scared and confused by its own death, and the tiny echo that followed.

The gate is not locked. The Minintos slave who whisked her here after the throbbing chaos at the Coliseum forgot the key. There is fear in the air and a high bright silent tension that leaves Damia's ears ringing and her jaw tight. She knows something is wrong. It is more wrong than all of her life so far has been wrong.

She lies very still and breathes shallowly and waits for her mother.

Distant voices shout back and forth outside the gate. They leave bruises on her exposed side. Damia draws herself down into the water. She hears but does not listen. She waits.

She does not listen until the shout is her name.

It is not her mother calling. Her mother has no voice. "Damia!" her lord yells. His voice has a brittle edge like broken glass. She flinches. "Damia, come!"

She hears, but she pretends she does not hear. Every muscle in her small body tightens. The water ripples and goes still again. Finally the Minintos comes and Damia sits up.

He frowns at the unlocked gate. She looks at him. He does not look back at her. "Better come," he says.

The silk tunic she wore at the Coliseum clings wetly. Streamers of dark blue dye run down her thighs. She is cold. The Minintos leads her through the halls of Ulhurel's house to his lounge. The smell of the ocean rises through the open windows. Outside, the white sea birds are sobbing. Damia does not understand them. They have no reason to cry.

"Damia!" Ulhurel shouts again. The Minintos opens the door. She goes in.

The lounge is in ruin. Disemboweled pillows and the ornamentations of looted civilizations are strewn everywhere. A crack runs down the front of her mother's vivarium. An inch of spillage puddles the floor. The water beyond the glass is dark and clouded as the water in the flooded Coliseum when the dragon died. In the corner, a Gigantos woman lays a dropcloth over the mess. A second Minintos slave tends to Damia's lord. Damia cannot see her mother. The birds outside the windows sob and sob.

Ulhurel sprawls languidly on a divan. His fine clothes are torn and stained. One sleeve is a shredded flag. Blood crusts his fine pale hair and trickles down from a long slash across his lips. His eyes are closed.

"Damia!"

"Lord," she whispers.

He crooks a finger. She goes to him. One of his eyes is blackened.

"My dragon is murdered, and I've been betrayed," he says. His voice rasps. "I need a new champion. -Aah, careful!" he hisses to the Minintos. The healing salve she pats into his cuts crackles with magic. Damia bites her tongue. She does not encourage or provoke him.

"Do you want to learn death, Damia? I'll teach you. Do you want to be a killer like your sow mother?"

Bloody water trickles through the crack in the vivarium. Damia fixes her eyes on that. "Yes, Lord."

Ulhurel lets go a long breath. "Good." He draws her close to him, his hand on her narrow hip. His nails are sharp and rimmed with blood. Damia watches his hand. This is the hand that hurts her mother. He is touching her with that hand.

"I feel like shit," he mutters. "Sing to me, Damia."

Her lord never makes her sing when they are alone. He doesn't touch her. He leaves her mother alone. Damia feels very cold and very far away. She is back in the Coliseum, watching a dragon die.

She opens her mouth to sing. She coughs instead. Once she starts, she coughs harder and harder. She is gagging on the thoughts she does not want to think. She is drowning in the bloody water that is dripping down from her mother's vivarium. Ulhurel's hand slides down her thigh and he lets her go. She steps away from the divan, out of his reach, and fights to breathe again. Her chest heaves and steadies.

The three other slaves watch her. Their faces are blank. She is not part of their clan.

Damia begins to sing.

Her voice trembles at first. She does not sing loudly. Still the high arches of Ulhurel's lounge take the sound and multiply it until she hears herself singing everywhere. It is a lullaby such as Winglies sing their children to calm them. She does not know what her mother would sing her if she cried in the night, so she sings this.

Ulhurel settles back on the divan. He brushes the Minintos with the salve away and closes his eyes. The strange huskiness of Damia's imperfectly formed throat soothes him. The hand with the bloody fingernails rests on his chest, over his torn finery.

Damia takes slow, quiet steps through the puddles as she continues to sing. A little way from the divan lies a vase of worked silver and ivory. The lilies it held now float in the bloody water around it. She picks it up. It is heavy.

Ulhurel's eyes remain closed. A smile curls his split lips. Damia steps back through the pools of water and the echoes of her own voice. She stops by the head of his divan. Her hands do not shake. The other slaves watch. She sings and Ulhurel dreams and she sings and blood runs down the crack in the glass and she sings and she lifts the heavy vase and she sings.

Then she stops singing. She brings the vase down on her lord's skull with all the strength she has. There is a crack. The echoes of her voice die away.

The hand that hurt her mother clenched when she struck Ulhurel the first time. She lifts the vase and strikes him again and the hand uncurls. It slithers off his chest and trails on the floor. She hits him again and part of his forehead crumples in. Blood soaks through the cushions of the divan. Wingly blood is paler than her mother's blood.

She keeps hitting him until she cannot see his face anymore.

The silver vase drops to the floor and rolls away clattering. None of the slaves speak or scream or run for help. Damia turns from the divan and goes to the corner where the Gigantos laid the cloth. Red blooms through it like seabed flowers. She lifts it. Underneath lies a mangled heap of bloody scales and indigo fins and staring black eyes and that is Damia's mother. Ulhurel's pale blood is in her broken teeth and on her clawed fingers.

Damia picks up her mother's hand and presses against it, palm to webbed palm. She waits for some last flicker of life, some squeeze of _farewell_ or _take heart_ or _I love you_.

She waits, but there is nothing left.

She kneels in the stained puddles and picks up her mother's body. It is not heavy. Her mother was small. Damia carries her past the three slaves who have drawn together, watching without a word and without lifting a hand, and past the vivarium that was a prison and the couch where their lord lies with his brains leaking out onto the cushions. She carries her to the window, where the smell of the sea is salt and the white birds are crying because of freedom.

Carefully Damia lays her mother on the broad sill of the window. She climbs up beside her. The wind whistles as it tugs her closer. The ocean lies below. She looks back into her lord's house. She sees all the blood that stains it now and all the blood that has been washed away over the years. She thinks of food, a knife, a tunic that is not clammy with deatt, but she does not go back. More than all of these things, she wants her mother and her mother's world.

"Almighty Soa, what do we tell them?" one of the Minintos says to his partner.

Damia gathers her mother's body close against her chest. She curls her toes around the edge of the windowsill and breathes deep. Then she tips forward into the wind and the salt air, and she falls and falls and falls until the sea reaches up and wraps her in its arms.


	8. Ebony Doll

[A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing the last chapter! I appreciate all of your feedback. This chapter introduces Syuveil as a narrator, in the journal entries that he writes during the Dragon Campaign. I hope you like his perspective on his comrades; he's a lot of fun to write.]

* * *

**EBONY DOLL**

.

_You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;  
you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain._

[Song of Songs 4:12]

.

[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #1:]

.

ZIEG FELD *

Mid twenties. Birthdate unknown. Approximately six feet even. Blond hair. Short beard. Blue eyes. Short temper, juvenile sense of humor. Acts before thinking; surprisingly successful in spite of it. Thrives on the battle as much as on the victory afterward. Former fighting slave (non-gladiatorial). Former commander of Emperor Diaz's army. Commander of Dragoons. The first Dragoon. Hostile toward other men (B. is exempt.) Insecure?

* (Clan name of dubious authenticity. No survivors of clan to verify. Included here because Z. is so damn proud of it.)

Red-Eyed Dragoon: affiliated with fire, heat. Transformation triggered by strong emotion (?) linked to racing pulse (?) Induces fevers in host. Fairly swift in flight. Can maintain transformation for extended periods (up to three hours verified.)

Vassal Dragon ("Dart"): Airborne. Winged. Fire-breathing. Matches and fuels Z.'s battle frenzy. Getting too big for a rooftop.

BELZAC

Late twenties. Birthdate unknown. Seven feet tall. Part Giganto? (seems reasonable to me). Built like a mountain. Pale green eyes. Former quarry slave. Former fighting slave (non-gladiatorial). Second Dragoon. Second-in-command? Dislikes Diaz. Close to Z. Close to S. Has proposed marriage and been rejected. Still wears on his head a scarf she gave him. Quiet and easy to get along with. A mistake to think him either slow-witted or infinitely patient. Frightening when angered. Keeps Z. safe from danger and from his own choices.

Golden Dragoon: affiliated with stone, earth, mountains, erosion, weight. Damn heavy. Difficult to transform, although side effects of transformation are becoming plain. Reports loss of clarity of vision, sensitivity to various stimuli. Perhaps pain provokes transformation (?)

Vassal Dragon ("Condor"): Blind. Heavy. Vivid and frequent dreams. Tightly bound to B.'s emotional state (which way does the connection flow?)

SHIRLEY

Mid twenties. Birthdate unknown. Five foot three. Very long, very red hair—take note future artisans, if you read this. Blue eyes. Former slave. Widow of another fighting slave (non-gladiatorial), B. and Z.'s comrade. Escaped slavery with B. and Z. Third Dragoon. Keeps very much to herself, very private. Protective of Rose. Friends with everyone but only at arm's length. Does not wish to discuss B.'s feelings for her or vice versa though she seems closest to him out of all. Experiences as a slave may be assumed to be traumatic. Attempts to discuss this with her met with silence or evasion. Cannot say whether she holds a grudge against me for it.

Extremely popular with the freed humans. Extremely uncomfortable with said popularity.

White Dragoon: affiliated with natural light (esp. starlight; also sun, moon.) Broad wings. Good vision. Transformation not related to anger or fear for self? As needed. Perhaps as needed by others. Healing qualities in light and touch. Her light can burn under certain circumstances. Went temporarily blind after first transformation; occasional relapses continue.

Vassal Dragon: None (died before she became Dragoon?)

ROSE

Early twenties. Birthdate in Wingly records somewhere. 5'7". Ancestry traced to Ruj tribe. Hair like black silk, eyes like midnight. Flawless. Fearless. Terribly broken and scarred where no one can see. Former pet of Charle Frahma. In the process of discovering her individuality. Remarkably patient with Z.'s idiocy.

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[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #2:]

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We stand on the precipice of history. We sleep in its shadow at night when the silhouette of our half-built city on the mountain falls over Magrad. A runaway slave rebellion has grown to the point of posing-if not the threat of destruction-serious opposition, at least, to the Wingly domination that is all we have ever known. We hunt monsters as old as Endiness itself, and we bend their wills to our own. Mere humans are wielding magic and challenging Winglies in the very skies that they claim to own.

If there has ever been such a revolution of people, of minds, of magic, no record of that time remains. As I am the only one of my companions with both the vantage point and the capability to write more than an X for my name, it falls to me to record _our_ time.

This is the time of the Dragoons. Already it has been named the Dragon Campaign. The name alone inspires more hope than calling it another slave rebellion. It sounds like victory, and that is what we so badly need.

This chronicle is for who we are, what battles we fight, what it costs us and what we gain, so that you—you unknown reader of some unknown future era—will understand the history that has changed the face of your Endiness. The very best and the very worst of human hearts are on display here. I solemnly swear on any oath you may name that I will write nothing that is untrue, and I will leave nothing out. It seems to me that, in the receding tide of Wingly reign, truth is an even rarer treasure than the power of magic.

This is my gift to you. Please do not cast this journal aside. We bleed and we die, we love to the fullest extent lest our hearts be shattered. Give _me_ the assurance that we will, at the very least, not be forgotten.

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[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #3:]

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(If I must)

SYUVEIL

Twenty-four years old. Birthdate in Wingly records. Five feet, ten and one quarter inches tall. Bred in the Birth City to inherit delicate features, fine bones, intelligence, and creativity. Also musical talent. Master blackstone strategist. Fine penmanship. A thousand other pointless talents. Former pet of Charle Frahma.

Honest, even if no other virtues come readily to mind. With that in mind, let me add "neurotic" and "slightly compulsive" to the list of qualities. Also "prone to headaches, occasional ulcers." The fourth Dragoon to find myself, or to be found, at the front lines of the war for humanity.

Jade Dragoon: affiliated with wind. Flora seems responsive to my magic (?) Swift in flight.

Vassal Dragon ("Feyrbrand"): Beautiful. Graceful. Long-limbed. Spins webs when feeling contented and safe. Capable of lifting and manipulating a variety of objects in its front legs. Faceted vision (?) Rudimentary wings not especially useful for flying. Fond of scratches under the chin and around the joints. Fond of music.

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[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #6:]

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I have loved Rose for as many years as I have known her name. I always swore that the day I escaped, it would be to return for her-to set her free from Charle's cruel affection. I did not expect thanks because Rose has only a nodding acquaintance with the concept of choice. That I might deserve thanks, for having _chosen_ to risk myself for her, is too difficult a concept.

And yet—

And yet I believed that she and I would be together in freedom, because I was all she knew, and because she is my world. Please understand, dear hypothetical reader of mine, what I feel for Rose is not lust. I wanted to set her _free_. After a lifetime as a pretty plaything of Charle's court, I wished to give her nothing more than a life away from lecherous eyes and grasping hands, even my own.

But all our plans are written in sand. I never considered Zieg Feld and how a person like Rose would affect him. He is obsessed. He intends to win her in the end despite all I say or do. The most I can do is warn him (and he laughs at the notion of _me_ warning _him)_ to be as mindful of her scars, her relative innocence, as he is of her beauty.

That Rose herself begins to choose gives me hope that, in the end, she will not choose him. In the meantime, I shall continue to grind my teeth every time he looks at her. At the current rate of erosion, I will soon grind them out of existence entirely, and be reduced to a diet of soup and tea.

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[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #9:]

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I spoke to Z. about my concerns re: Rose. He fails to understand that not all slavery means whips and chains. It is my opinion that Rose suffered more on the silken thread of Charle Frahma's favor than Z. ever did when he was bound to hard labor alongside B. He sees no scars and no bruises on her white skin and therefore he does not believe me.

There is a torment of the mind, though, one that surpasses physical pain. In this matter Charle is in every respect her brother's equal. For Rose it is so much worse than it is for me. She has been so firmly in Charle's palm from such a young age that she struggles with the concept of self-of friendships-of desires, preferences, objections where even the simplest decisions are concerned. Zieg wants her in his bed and he wants her to be his next Dragoon, to race through the free skies by his side. He does not listen to how precarious and how important it is for Rose _herself_ to want something.

If he loves her as he says he does-I doubt he fully grasps what it means to love a woman like Rose-then he will put her tentative wishes ahead of his own confident alpha-male intentions.

I was trying to convince him of this when he turned the tables on me. (A timely reminder that, despite appearances, Z. did not get to where he is by pure blind luck. There is some cleverness in him under the thuggish exterior.)

He gets a certain gleam in his eye when he is sure he has caught onto something, and it infuriates me like nothing else. "Syuveil," he said, "If belonging to Charle leaves a kid that addled and lost inside their own head, how do you explain your being so different from Rose?"

"Charle liked me better in trousers than skirts," I retorted, because I was irritated.

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[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #9.5:]

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(I suppose that, for the sake of maintaining my self-awarded reputation for honesty, I should finish this entry before I begin the next)

He wasn't only taunting me, though. He expected a real answer.

I told Zieg that I was different than Rose because, unlike her, I had already experienced a moment of awakening. There came a day when I looked up from my own confusion and saw another person, someone who needed help and whom I was capable of helping.

To a slave who has had no free will and no worth to anyone beyond his master, it triggered a cataclysmic reassessment of my existence. It created within the shell of Charle Frahma's pretty toy a man who was willing to take any risk to be of use to that one person. First, because I simply _wanted_ to. Secondly, because it _mattered_ that no one else be trapped in Charle's identity-erasing head games.

Rose is free of Charle, but she is still lost in that dream. I believe she will continue to struggle to see herself as a person until the day she becomes aware of another person, someone who needs her as desperately as she aches to be needed for all that she is. At the present time_, she is not capable of loving someone_, because she is not even capable of compassion. She is with us now because we Dragoons were the ones to claim her and not because our fight is her own. She looks upon all of us with remote curiosity, sometimes confusion, but without any sort of empathy or investment. She does not see us as individuals because she does not see herself.

I wonder what it will take for one of us-I won't assume it will be me-to rip the blinders off of her eyes. I wonder when she will take action on behalf of another person.

"So who was it you saw?" Z. asked, proving that he was not quite as clever as I had just thought. It was Rose herself, of course.

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[FROM SYUVEIL'S JOURNAL, ENTRY #14:]

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Z. has gotten his wish. My beautiful Rose is now numbered among his Dragoons.

With Emperor Diaz's blessing, we have been conducting research into the other Dragons of Endiness. We seek to establish their numbers, their habitat, so that we may hunt them down, murder them, and make lapdogs of their offspring. There are five of us now. We hope for some ten or twenty more, although the skeptic in me does not share Z.'s vision of a sky filled with Dragoons. He is drunk on success these days.

The bastard traded me to Charle Frahma for information. (Forgive my coarse language, unknown reader; I keep low company these days.) That was her price. Z. doesn't understand how a three-hour teatime with the creature who enslaved me is torment. He has never been introduced to subtlety.

I suffered through an afternoon in her company-swearing to kill him all the while-as Charle reminded me, with seemingly innocent touches and passing remarks, that I used to be a plaything for her and her court. Her smiles are sweet poison. In return, she brought me to the great library in Kadessa, there to ransack millennia of research which is otherwise denied to humans.

(It is convenient for her and for Zieg that I can still pass for her attendant. During our brushes with Wingly aristocracy, I have remained unrecognized. They do not know I am a Dragoon. All they see is her pet human, the pretty man with the soft hair they love to touch. As for the reports that I had run away, she dismisses them with a wave. If she is feeling vindictive that day (and when is any Wingly _not_ vindictive, not fully conscious of their place in the world?) she suggests that I have been—shall we say—_convinced_ to stay, and they laugh and stroke my hair and then forget that I exist.

Z. sees this as a mark in the column tallying up my uses to him. Charle sees this as a cheerful reminder that I was once hers, and that she continues to exercise control over me. I am not so much free of my cage as on a very long leash.)

The library had only a little information on dragons. They are almost as much a mystery to Winglies as they are to us. The Sea Dragon at the Coliseum was the first such creature any of them had seen, and of course we murdered it right under their noses. They did have a smattering of reported sightings, which I am attempting to consolidate, as there is some evident overlap—that will be my next entry here.

Although Z. and I have established an uneasy collaboration on certain matters, he continues to see me as a fluke, a waste of a Dragoon. He insists that he will be able to choose the hosts for the souls of the remaining dragons. (Of course we do not _have_ the dragon spirits yet, but Z. has not only counted, he has cooked and eaten these unhatched chickens.) He focused on the reports of the black dragon in the eastern mountains. He thought it would suit Rose best. Leaving Belzac and Shirley to support Diaz's army in a raid on a nearby quarry, he took Rose to make her a Dragoon.

I went with them to the mountains—that was _my_ price. A Wingly outpost floated only fifty miles away, so we left the dragons behind. Z.'s Dart shrieked its displeasure; Feyrbrand merely sulked.

It was a strange place we found: jagged rock spires and crumbling ascents shrouded in mist. There were no trees and no shelter, only dripping moss. We spent two days hiking through the peaks. The signs of dragon were all around us: droppings, chewed bones, claw tracks in the cracked earth. Of the dragon itself, nothing. The local wildlife was quiet, the way wild things become when a large predator is near.

Eventually we realized that it was hunting _us._

We held a brief consultation. The end result was that I went on alone—as bait—while Zieg and Rose stepped into a crevice, to ambush the dragon after it passed them by.

I can admit here, in the privacy of the written word, that I was scared. Remember, reader, that I had never yet faced down a prime dragon. The progenitor of my graceful Feyrbrand was killed by the other three Dragoons before I joined them. My only experience was Z.'s assault on the captive dragon in the Coliseum, and for that I had been in the stands with Charle Frahma, on hand in case he needed me (which he did not, and never has.) I did not know what to expect from this one, only that I was now alone.

As I walked, I filled my mind with thoughts of Rose. Z. was not alone in his wish for her to become a Dragoon, although our motivations were different. He wanted Rose for a partner. I wanted Rose to be deadly and free, in no need of his condescending protection, out of any Wingly master's reach. I wanted that for her, even knowing that with the power of the Dragoon comes a madness, a twisting of the mind and soul, dreams and nightmares that are not one's own. What could a dragon's spirit do to Rose that Charle Frahma had not already done?

I imagined her rising on a wind of fire until the thought burned me with longing. The dragon's covetous spirit came alive within me. I held that fire, the Jade Dragoon stone shining bright around my neck, and hoped that Z. was not too far behind me.

Later, I learned that he wasn't far at all. Even still, he was nearly too late. The black dragon was very swift and _very_ quiet. I heard the rattle of a pebble falling behind me and turned in time to see something blacker than night perched on the crag, looming over me. Its unfurling wings blotted out the sky.

When its shadow fell over me, I experienced one moment of animal panic. I couldn't move. I might as well have been a rabbit, frozen with terror at the sight of the wolf.

The spirit of the dragon in me experienced no such fear. It flared to life. Armor rippling over me, translucent onionskin layers spreading and thickening until it became a shimmering, impervious shell. I felt the weight of broad white wings settling on my back, then no weight at all. When the black dragon's talons lashed out, like some scorpion's underslung tail, it struck only armor.

The force of the blow still flung me sprawling. My moment of cowardly paralysis ended, I scrambled back to my feet. Through the roar of the black dragon, I made out Z.'s voice. "Was that part of the plan?"

I looked up and saw him, already transformed, hovering out of the black dragon's range. "Where is Rose?" I shouted back.

He pointed to a higher crag, where he had placed Rose for safety while we killed the beast for her. She gazed down at us, her eyes as black as the dragon, sword in hand. As I looked, she threw herself gracefully off the height, landed on the monster's neck, and stabbed it through the eye.

(If I had any artist's skill, reader, I would draw for you the expression on Z.'s face at that moment. Until that moment he had not understood what his own pet mission would entail. He did expected Rose to sit back and watch as he killed the dragon for her. It had never occurred to him that, for Rose to be worthy of a dragon's spirit, she would need to have a Dragoon's heart from the beginning—as we all did.

It is amusing in retrospect. It was less so at the time.)

Rose's strike did not, sadly, penetrate the dragon's brain. She slid down its shoulder to land lightly at its feet—just a woman, beautiful, white-skinned, very small beside the monster's darkness. Z. dove to rescue her and the half-blinded dragon almost bit him in half. It fell to me to grab her and fly us both out of the way of saber-clawed feet.

Rose shared none of our panic. Bundled awkwardly in my arms, she placed one hand on my chest. The other still held her rapier. Her eyes were still on the dragon. "Syuveil," she said, and that was all.

Z. was not so much attacking it as trying to stay alive. It struck at him again and again, claws and head and tail, so that all his energy was spent blocking or dodging blows. It would not last long. This dragon was vicious. The others (so B. tells me) had tried to avoid battle once seeing that we were not going to be delicious morsels; this one had come to kill us, just as we had come to kill it.

I waited until it took another lunge at Zieg. Then I did as Rose wanted. I flew low and let her drop back into the fray, to strike at the dragon from below while I joined Z.

Fighting the black dragon was not like fighting Winglies, or like our raid on Ulara. It was slow and ugly. Z. and I harried it from above, demanding its attention and keeping it from fleeing to a more advantageous position, while Rose moved like a knife around its legs and belly. It was the same strategy that had taken down the second of the dragons, the golden soul B. inherited. The difference was that they had gone in with some fifty men, plus Z., and lost eighteen of them. This time, there were only Z. and I, Dragoons, and Rose herself.

I cannot say all that happened, or how long it took to bring the dragon down, because everything happened at once and yet very slowly. From a vent in the dragon's abdomen issued jets of black fire that bored holes into the surrounding rock, and would certainly have meant the death of any of us. Perhaps it is for the best that we had brought no crowds of soldiers to trip over each other, freeze, and die.

Rose did her best to cut the tendons in its legs, crippling it. (Her sword was Wingly-made, a gift from Charle, and scored the dragon's plated hide almost as well as Dragoon fire.) Where the dragon's blood dripped onto the rock, it rose in clouds of black smoke. As our fight went on, it grew thicker, until the day itself seemed to darken.

And then, with a thump and a great gasp of smoke, it ended.

I saw almost nothing of the dragon's actual death, to my chagrin: firstly because of the smoke, and secondly because one of its black fire bursts had caught me just above the knee and burned a divot of flesh and Dragoon armor clear away. That the armor had been seared as easily as mortal flesh disturbed me. If I had been any slower, no doubt I would have lost the entire leg. At the exact moment that either Zieg or Rose dispatched the monster—I believe it was Rose's doing, because Z. would never have shut his mouth if it had been his own kill—I was on the ground, trying to staunch the bleeding, and getting crusty bits of my own burned flesh all over my hands. In retrospect, Shirley's company would have been a blessing.

Z. glanced around to verify that I was alive. The spirit of the Dragoon faded from him, leaving him in his dusty red armor. Rose was flushed and breathing hard, but unharmed. I had been so proud of her when she upended her soup on Z.'s head; I was so proud now. There was nothing in all of Endiness that my beautiful one could not overcome.

She walked into the thickest part of the smoke. I did not hear what she said to the dead monster, but when she emerged, in her fist shone an ember light that hurt my eyes even after I shut them. I bit my lip to choke down an agony of triumph and longing. Z. must have done the same.

"Extinction or war," she said—to Z., I think—and then the light grew brighter and the day darker, and all the hair on my arms and neck stood on end as if a ghost had breathed upon me. The air smelled of smoke and magic. Something reached into my chest and held my heart from beating for one moment, two, three. Then the world lurched; I gasped for air, Zieg grunted as if he'd been stabbed; and a Dark Dragoon stood where my Rose had been. She was sleek in ebony armor, plated like the dragon's hide, and her wings glowed like old bones in the sunlight.

At that moment, when she turned her black eyes upon us like strangers, she made the mountains tremble. For the first time, I was afraid of her.

(I wish I had heard the entirety of her conversation with the dying dragon.)

It was Z. who broke the spell of Rose's distant gaze and the atmosphere of death. He held out his hand-which she looked at with no more than her usual confusion-and said, "We choose war, then." That is his redeeming quality: he has no fear of death. The word means nothing to him.

I wiped my face and busied myself with my injuries. The Jade Dragoon would not let me go, making bandaging complicated. At the least, it kept me from feeling the pain that was no doubt awaiting me.

The other two joined me. Z. took off his undershirt and belted it around my thigh to soak up the blood. Rose carried in her arms a very small, unsteady-looking creature which she called Michael. Shock had begun to replace the cold face of judgment, but she wrapped her golden wings around the newborn dragon like a mother.

We set on our way back, our mission victorious, our ranks swelled. The dragon-spirits clung to Rose and I, although we walked (or, in my case, limped) at Zieg's pace.

We did not walk long. As we crested a ridge, the dragonling struggled for freedom. It flung itself out of Rose's arms, caught the wind, and soared. Unlike B.'s Condor or Z.'s Dart, it was capable of flight from birth. It cried, a high piping note nothing like the earth-shaking bellow of its parent. Rose watched it rise. I am very certain that she smiled: perhaps one of the first real smiles I have seen from her. With as little warning as she gave before leaping onto the black dragon, she followed Michael over the edge of the mountain. Her wings caught the sunlight and flashed.

Z. whooped and dove after her, not even waiting for the spirit of the Red-Eyed Dragon to obey his command. I did not waste my worry. In a moment, its heat rushed over him, and he sped after Rose on fiery wings. I followed, and the three of us raced back toward Magrad.

In the middle of the air, Z. caught Rose. They tumbled through the clouds in a tangle of wings. When they righted themselves, they were holding each other, and I believe Rose was the only one surprised when Zieg kissed her.

I was behind them and un-kissed and could not help seeing what Z. did not. As his eyes closed in ecstasy, Rose's eyes opened wide with fear. The dark ember light of the Dragoon armor faded from her, and the bone-yellow wings shattered into pieces. She wrapped her arms around his neck. When Z. at last broke off the kiss (taking his damn time about it, too) he realized that she held onto him not out of reciprocated passion, but from fear of falling to her death.

The rest of our journey home was more somber. Our war was yet to be won.


	9. Suicide in Ulara

[A/N: Insert here the usual reasons for delayed chapter updates, and the usual reminder that each chapter is written from a different perspective. We're back to Zieg now as he continues to try and win Rose's heart.]

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SUICIDE IN ULARA

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The day had come at last: Rose asked for Zieg's company. If Zieg scribbled in a journal all day the way Syuveil did, he'd mark that day in scarlet.

Rose had continued to hold him at a distance—held all of them, really, except for Shirley. (It was a female thing. Zieg didn't ask.) She'd been bolder since they hunted down the black dragon, more vocal, less passive. She even laughed at jokes now, and Soa's toes, she got prettier by the day. But since the day Zieg kissed her, she hadn't said two words to him that weren't about battle plans.

And now she wanted to see him.

Syuveil played messenger boy, though it must have galled him. He carried her request up to where Zieg and Belzac, armed with hammers and curses, cobbled together tables for the second Dragoon Tower. When he heard that Rose wanted him, Zieg abandoned the hammer and took the steps four at a time.

Around him, the Dragoon Towers rose like teeth growing into the mouth of some colossal infant. The two women shared the first, the three men crowded into the second, and the half-completed third was temporarily used for storage. (Syuveil didn't even know which end of a hammer to hold, but that green tusked dragon of his could run clean up the sides of Vellweb with supplies strapped to its back. Generously Zieg counted that as the kid pulling his own weight.) As the other towers were built, they would spread out. It was still a damn sight better than the single room they'd shoehorned themselves into down in Fort Magrad, downat the bottom of the mountains.

Seen from the outside, day or night, the towers were beautiful. Only the Dragoons who lived there knew that the insides were full of mismatched and broken furniture. There would be time enough to live in splendor when the wars were won and Vellweb was the jewel of a new world.

At least they didn't go hungry anymore. Emperor Diaz had declared that his valiant Dragoons had enough to worry about—what with fighting Winglies and defending the human settlements—without scrabbling about for food like the rest of the refugees. Now food was sent up to them every day on a pulley, and it wasn't dry crusts, either. They didn't often go down into the construction-cluttered streets of Vellweb anymore. Now, when Diaz had orders, he came to them.

Shirley didn't like it. She said pedestals and worship were just another form of slavery. In her usual inside-out fashion, she wasn't just talking about those who did the worshipping.

When Zieg tilted his head back, he could just see her, all that scarlet hair waving like a banner at the very top of the second tower where she kept watch. Someday they would have a cannon to deal with incoming threats, one as big as the towers themselves. It would be powerful enough to blast even the fortress of Flanvel out of the air. Syuveil and Diaz were working on the blueprints. For now, the Dragoons themselves were Vellweb's defense.

So far the Winglies had left them alone. Word from Charle Frahma was that, since Zieg's surprise appearance at the Kadessa Coliseum, the Dragoons had become a topic of casual interest. The human rebellion itself was not considered a serious threat. So far they had done little except defend and slowly, _slowly_ expand the borders of Diaz's little sanctuary. The scouting parties and floating outposts they had destroyed, the quarries and plantations they had raided to free the slaves there—these were seen as accidents, anomalies, the unlucky. Revolutions always happened.

The Winglies didn't see that this time, their former slaves were driven by power as well as passion. They didn't know that this one would overturn the world.

Zieg wouldn't have it any other way.

He slowed to a walk, crossing over the arches that spanned the empty air between the towers. The dizzying height demanded caution, even if the dragonsoul in him would catch him in midair. Five feet wide of solid stone walkway looked thin as a thread against that drop. The people below were ants.

Why Shirley wanted to spend her time mucking about down there in the mud, when the winds howled freedom around the unfinished towers, was beyond him.

They'd argued earlier. About Belzac, the only subject that ever really divided them. Zieg loved the red-haired woman like the sister he never had, and Soa knew she was a far better person than he had been or could ever be, but when it came to Belzac Zieg just wanted to shake her. She'd said plain enough that she loved him. What did it matter if she wasn't _in love_ with him? He'd be goddamn good for her, and she'd make his whole world shine. As far as Zieg was concerned, since she didn't have her eye on anyone else, she might as well give the big man a chance.

Shirley didn't agree. "I don't want to be anyone's woman again," she had said. "That's not the absence of desire, Zieg. What I _want _is to be my own."

They'd argued in circles for an hour. Belzac was busy with the dragons, otherwise neither of them would have breathed a word. They left the matter unresolved, each exasperated with the other's thick-headedness.

Probably Shirley could see him too, crossing the last span, almost as far below her as Vellweb was from him. Syuveil had told him to find Rose at one of the unfinished towers. He saw her ahead, a slim black line against the stone and sky, and the sight of her chased away the last of his sour mood.

His boots sounded on the steps. Rose stood at the far side of the tower, on the very brink of a drop that made him feel lightheaded. She faced away from him, poised in that straight-backed way she had. Her ebony hair whirled around her head in the updraft. He approached with almost reverential slowness, cautious of startling her with that void sucking at her toes.

Her senses were good. She half-raised one hand without turning.

All that hair called to him, flying quick as whispers, black as death. Zieg watched it for a moment before succumbing to the impulse to put his hand out and let the silken threads wind around his fingers. They were so soft and fine. He closed his fist, gray with dust, around them.

Rose turned toward him. One brow arched upwards. Zieg's mouth went dry. This was it. She'd called for him, she was giving him the chance Shirley wouldn't give Belzac. Zieg bent to kiss her, and Rose was on the other side of the tower foundations so fast that he started to look over the edge for her plummeting body. Razor cuts laced his palm where her hair had sliced across the skin.

"Bloody hell! Ow!"

Rose reached out and laid her hand over his lips. Her fingers were cold and smooth. "I have been thinking, Zieg," she said.

Zieg closed his fist around the sliced palm and hid it behind his back. He arranged his face into a patient expression. "Right, okay. What about?" Clearly not about kissing him—at least not yet.

"About myself." Had he heard that right? Rose continued evenly, indifferent to his confusion. "I was born in the City of Life. I think my forefathers were from the isles of Ruj."

She walked past him to the steps of the tower. At the landing, she leaned against the wall, balanced on one foot with the other braced behind her. Zieg followed, wondering what harbor had launched _this _ship of thought. Whatever it was, it meant a respite from work and from her silence. He sat at her feet, reveling in her nearness. "My grandfather was a chieftain in the southern swamps," he began.

Rose fixed him with one of those long, intense stares that made everyone, even Diaz, put a cork in it. When satisfied that Zieg would keep his mouth shut, she continued.

"My first memory is of standing upon one of the parapets of Ulara. The world was very far below, hidden by clouds like burial cloths. I was only a little child. Inside of me was a vast sadness, a loneliness the whole universe could not fill. I was afraid that I would become lost in it.

"No one else was around. As you know, the walkways of Wingly cities have no railings. I stepped over the edge and fell toward my death."

Zieg started. "On purpose?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"What the hell were you _thinking?"_

"I am not sure." She shrugged. "I was young. We all have such longings to fall."

"I don't," Zieg mused. She looked at him. He shut up.

"I did not fall very far," she went on. She had a beautiful voice, clear and soft. Zieg had never heard this much of it before. "Caron caught me—the apprentice keeper of the great teleporters. Charle Frahma heard about the little girl who fell without screaming, without fear. She had me brought to her. I sat on her footstool, eating apricots, while her maids brushed my hair. They were human. They kept their faces very empty when they were near me."

Propping his chin on his hands, Zieg listened. He could imagine her, even more delicate than she was now, a new-hatched dragonfly in the spider's nest.

Rose fingered the ribbon on which she hung her Dragoon Stone, gazing distantly away at the sky. "Charle told me not to be sad. That it was rude to Soa and the Archangel who made me to be sad, and most of all to _her_, who had chosen me out of all my brothers and sisters to be born and to come live with her in the sky. She called me beautiful and precious. She said that I must not try to fall again, or she would be very strict with me. But if I was good, and a happy child, she would make me her own—a little princess among her slaves."

He finished for her. "And that's how you became her favorite."

"Yes. She taught me many things." Rose tucked her hair back. Her lashes were so long that they touched her cheeks when she blinked. "But that is not why I told you this story, Zieg Feld."

He couldn't help but grin at the sound of his name in her mouth. Now they were coming to it. She had been thinking about death for too long; it was time for her to live. "I get it," he said softly. "I'm glad you trust me."

"No," she answered immediately. "I cannot trust someone who does not understand me. Listen, Zieg: that little child who felt only sadness, who stepped into open air knowing she had no wings to fly, is still sitting here beside you." She leveled a finger at his heart. "_You _have never longed for death. That dragon soul in you cannot accept its own extinction. _You _fight in this war because you believe in a life held out ahead of you."

Zieg's grin faltered as she spoke. He felt like he had lost the thread of this conversation—if he had ever had it—and following it had led them towards a conclusion he did not like. Something cold and heavy settled under his heart, like wet sand on a fire. "We'll win," he insisted. "Don't lose hope. We'll _have _a life together. All of us, I mean," he added, not meaning it at all.

"That is beside the point," Rose said. She pushed herself away from the wall and stepped over him. "I fly with the Dragoons because I cannot wait to fall. That is my only passion."

In a burst of intuition, Zieg knew that she was saying goodbye. She had been weighing him since they met, thief and thieved, amidst the broken glass of Charle's palace. At last she had judged and found him wanting. She didn't believe the fire in him could match the darkness in her. She didn't want his love.

Get bent, Zieg, she was saying in her own sidelong way. This wasn't a knee in the groin and a bowl of hot stew on his head that they could laugh about later. This was worse. This was for keeps.

If this was it, if he couldn't sway her, they would be comrades and they would be friends and he would _never, _not in a thousand years, have this beautiful goddamn woman in his arms. But he didn't know how to change her mind. He wasn't Diaz with fine words or Syuveil with logic. He did the only desperate thing he could: he stalled.

"Rose, wait!"

He grabbed her wrist. She looked at his hand, as she always did, as if she were deciding whether to cut it off. Her skin was cold and smooth.

From his knees he looked up at her, and the thought came so loud and clear that it was impossible for Rose not to hear:_ if you would just let me hold you, you would be happy._

He held her arm while he scrambled to his feet. He had to keep her in this moment until it changed.

"Rose, Syuveil says I've wronged you. Says I don't understand what the two of you went through as Charle's slaves. I just want to say I'm sorry if he's right and I did hurt you." She tilted her head to the side, eyes black and remote as a winter night. He abandoned his pride. "Give me a chance," he pleaded.

Her brow creased. She seemed sincerely puzzled. "What kind of a chance do you want?"

"Love me."

Rose shook off his hand and folded her arms. "Do you think you deserve me?" she asked, very quietly. "Because you are the best of the Dragoons? Because you freed me?"

Zieg swallowed hard on his first thoughtless response. "No," he said at last. "I don't deserve you. I'd walk through fire for you and it wouldn't be enough."

Rose shook her head once, firmly_._ But the faintest hint of a smile creased her dark eyes as she asked, "Why do you think you love me?" He couldn't find words quickly enough, and ruthlessly she went on. "I was born to be a beauty, so I am beautiful. If the time ever comes for you and I to fight against each other, I will win, even if you cost me my life in the end. I am not proud of these things because I did not choose them for myself." Slowly she shook her head—_no_ and _never _to him. "If that is what you think you love me for, then you do not love who I really am."

At that his tongue came unstuck. "Tell me who you are, then!"

"Tell me who _you_ are, first." Rose tapped a finger against his chest. "You do not know yourself yet. You have not seen what lies at the core of your heart."

He brushed her hand away, unable to tolerate her touch if it came so unlovingly. He was frustrated, confused, disturbed. This was not what he had come to Rose to hear. This wasn't the _Rose_ he thought he knew. His head hurt. Somehow he had lost a battle, not knowing he was fighting until it was too late. "What do you want from me?" he demanded, helpless and angry.

"Nothing."

"Rose!" But after her name, he had nothing else to offer.

Her smile deepened. She made a motion as if to touch his face, but stopped herself. Instead she turned away and started down the stairs. The wind rose around Vellweb and rippled her black hair as she left him. "I do like you," she added over her shoulder. "And that is why you must not kiss me again. You fill my heart with fire, and burning to death is an uncomfortable thing."


	10. The Devil Came Knocking

THE DEVIL CAME KNOCKING

.

_It was in the lobby when I set my sights on you__  
I should have kissed you in the elevator__  
But I was too scared to__  
It was in the morning when I made up my mind__  
I want you staplegunned right to my side all the time_

_Do I have to spell it out for you__  
Or scream it in your face?  
__The chemistry between us could destroy this place_

[The Spill Canvas: "Staplegunned"]

.

It started with the child.

Toddling after his father's longer stride, he fell and bloodied his knee on the grit of the road. Shirley set down her bucket of water and knelt to inspect the damage. It wasn't bad. "Shh, shh," she crooned, as the child sucked in a lungful of air to wail. "You're not hurt."

The scarlet rope of her hair, braided to keep it out of the way, slid over her shoulder. The bright color distracted the child. He seized it in a grubby fist. Shirley gritted her teeth and endured. At least he wasn't crying. When he flung his warm arms around her neck, she stiffened. There was his father returning for him, though. She patted the child's back and forced a smile.

"Thanks, friend," the man said. She returned his son gratefully. The touch of the child's small, soft hands made the hair on her neck and arms stand on end.

She didn't recognize the dark-skinned man. It had been a long time since the human rebellion had been small enough for her to know faces, if not names. Now they filled a city and a half: ten thousand soldiers in Fort Magrad, their families and other noncombatants moving up the mountain into the half-built megalopolis of Vellweb. Day by day, the walls climbed toward the sky. Clouds of brick dust rose to choke the sun. Centermost and above the streets, suspended by arches, the Dragoon Towers cast ever-lengthening shadows. Two were already completed, and a third nearly so. Syuveil's design called for seven in all.

Zieg thought it was enough that the five of them fought for Vellweb's continued existence. The Dragoons took the most risks, threw themselves into the boil of Wingly magic as if they were immortal, sacrificed their very humanity for the power and insanity a dead dragon's soul offered them. Sweating over the city and the fields that fed it—that was for the other human refugees.

The _lesser_ ones.

Shirley did not agree. Neither did Belzac. Syuveil, the gangly scholar with the androgyne's face, said that his writing was his work. Shirley couldn't say what Rose thought because Rose didn't seem to think much about anything. The black-haired girl always looked slightly surprised by what happened around her. She had never done manual labor in Charle's court. The way Zieg treated her—his princess and black goddess—it didn't seem likely she would here, either.

It fell to Shirley to do Rose's share. Belzac did for the other two men. Without Zieg's approval, with Diaz's tacit permission, the two of them continued to take their turns among the other laborers.

Food was an urgent matter. The rapid growth of the human population placed heavy demands on the farms around Vellweb, especially now that the Wingly weathercasters withheld rain from the skies over Gloriano. Crews of workers in long lines carried buckets of water from the deep wells to the fields, while another set of crews—Belzac included—dug what would eventually become irrigation channels. It was hard work, but the former slaves reminded each other that what they did was for their own benefit, by their own choice. Shirley used it to remind herself that she was still only human.

Not everyone in Vellweb saw her as such, anymore.

She picked up her bucket and rejoined the line. The father of the clumsy child, however, continued to stare. "I haven't seen you with this crew before," he said. Shirley shrugged and ducked her head. He scooped his boy up under his arm and kept pace with her. "What's your name? Are you new here?" he pressed.

She evaded the question and his searching eyes. "I shift crews from time to time." Soa wither him, let him be satisfied with that.

But now the other slaves around her were taking notice. "I don't know her either," she heard one say. "Hair like that, you'd remember her."

It was a man up the line who looked back, started, and dropped his bucket. Water spilled across the cracked soil. "By the Tree," he gasped, loud enough for all to hear, "That's Dragoon Shirley!"

"Shirley!"

"Shirley the Radiant!"

"Dragoon Shirley!"

The line dissolved into chaos. The former slaves abandoned their tasks and crowded around the red-haired woman. They cried her name. A thicket of hands reached out for her-begging for blessings, for a touch; clutching at her sleeves and skirts; withered limbs and infants thrust toward her for miracles. Their fingers tore at her hair.

Shirley looked for escape, but everywhere she turned, more open mouths howled for her. The din grew as word spread: one of the Dragoons, stepped down from the heavens in the shape of a mortal woman. The crowd surged against her. Those in the front held onto her to keep from being dragged away or trampled underfoot. Her sleeve tore. The sound of her name became a maddened chant. She shielded her face with her hands. The Dragoon Stone on her breast was cold and dead. Her soul screamed for wings, for flight, but she could not fight against these people.

Then wings did wrap around her, but they were not her own. The voice of the mountains rumbled through the clamor, silencing other voices.

"Get back!"

Shirley uncovered her face. Belzac, hearing the commotion, fought through the press of bodies to her side. He towered over her, armored and alight with the power of the dragon in him. The big man's face was dark with anger. At the sight of him, the crowd retreated. His wings flared out like sheets of crystal, refracting blinding light among them.

Disheveled and shaken, Shirley reached out to him. Belzac looked down, and the flecks of green stone in his eyes softened. He picked her up and set her on his shoulder like a bird, out of reach. The workers realized his intention too late. They rushed forward again to claw at empty air as the Golden Dragoon leapt into the sky, taking their white messiah with him.

In the air, Belzac didn't speak. He glowed with a deep heat different than the blaze of the naked sun. Shirley wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed her eyes shut.

A thousand feet above, they landed, touching down lightly on the broad stone walk ringing the Towers. Belzac set Shirley on her feet. As the heat of the transformation faded from him, Shirley stepped away, taking stock of her new bruises, her torn clothing. Someone had yanked out several strands of her hair. Her hands trembled. In another five minutes, she would have been torn to pieces.

She was looking down at the ruined sleeve when Belzac touched her shoulder. She flinched. "Sorry," Belzac said. His voice became as low and gentle as it had been terrifying. "Are you alright?"

"Yes. You came just in time." Shirley forced a smile. "Thank you."

Belzac smoothed the hair that had come loose of her braid, then let his hand fall. Shirley avoided his eyes. She knew the look of concern and love she would find there. She was angry at having needed his help-rescued from her own people!—angrier still that he didn't mind. Belzac would never ask her for anything in return, nothing that would balance the scales between them.

She felt his eyes on her. The question he had asked the day the White-Silver Dragon came for her was always burning in the air between them, no matter how many months passed. It always would. Why did he insist on being hurt? Why did he make her hurt him? The anger flared.

She tugged her blouse straight and looked straight at him. Belzac gazed at her, a sad quirk lingering on his lips. There was such infuriating patience and understanding in that look.

He opened his mouth. Shirley spoke first, so that she did not have to hear. "I'm going to find Rose."

Belzac shut up. Shirley left, walking quickly, before her flash of anger turned to tears.

.

Her red hair had always made her stand out, even as a child. Her aunt, trying to spare her, had kept it shorn so close it left her almost bald. One day an overseer noticed the cherry-red curls defiantly sprouting from her head and ordered her to let them grow long. She had rarely cut her hair since.

Her master owned a vast garden near the Birth City, Deningrad, and slaves to tend it. Deningrad, with its crystal spire visible from miles away, was the only Wingly city to be permanently earthbound. Mothers of all the enslaved races came here to receive approval for their offspring—assisted in giving birth if they were favored; their pregnancies terminated and the little half-formed bodies ripped from their wombs if they were not. Winglies in more distant locations sent in requests for authorization to expand their slaveholdings. The breeding program was rigorously controlled. The punishments for bearing an illicit child were severe, with the euthanizing of the infant only the beginning. The Winglies had no intention of seeing rebellious temperaments passed on to a new generation.

Her master's garden was one of several in the area, designed to provide a serene retreat for Wingly mothers-to-be, delivering flowers to them at the celebration of the birth. (Slave mothers, obviously, had no such courtesy.) There were parks and groves, fountains and floating lights, stretching on far further than any of the floating cities had space to offer. The slaves, like Shirley, were selected to be attractive enough not to be an eyesore, but neither elegant nor clever enough to suffer reassignment to the higher echelons of Wingly society.

Shirley's mother died bearing her—a harsh blow to her master, who had intended to breed several more slaves with her fiery hair and gentle features. Her aunt kept Shirley out of his eye and reported that the child was a disappointment, resembling her father. Growing up, Shirley knew there must be something wrong with her.

She was seven when the overseer noticed the beauty of her hair. By the age of nine it fell halfway down her narrow back in a shining wave. Her master, escorting a pair of aristocrats through the grounds, looked quite keenly at her when she delivered an armful of lilies to their floating carriage. One of the women called her "a remarkably pretty thing, in its own way." For the first time, it occurred to Shirley that she was not hidden away out of some monstrous deformation.

The thought brought little pleasure. That night, her master sent for her for the first time.

When the Giganto guards came to take her, Shirley's aunt seized her by the throat and tried to choke her. The guards stopped her. Shirley went to her doom with bruises on her neck. When her master sent her back at dawn, she was told that her aunt had been executed.

Her master had a graceful wife and platinum-haired children of his own, all born with the stamp of Deningrad's approval. The guests he brought to the garden estate would have chided him for his indulgence if they knew. Intimate relations with non-Winglies was frowned upon, a distasteful but not uncommon aberration. But in the end, what a man did with his own slaves on his own lands was his own business. He came to her in the remote parts of the gardens, with only her fellow slaves for witness, and they turned their eyes to the ground and pretended they did not hear.

When she was fifteen, she helped arrange a delivery of flowers to a Wingly who made his fortune ushering aesthetically-minded nobles to distant and dangerous parts of Endiness, transporting them in comfort and protecting them from wild beasts. One of his favored slaves saw Shirley, with her hair like the sunset and her sad eyes, and asked to have her for his wife. The two Winglies negotiated. Two years later, she had outgrown her master's tastes, and he agreed to sell her.

Shirley could not stop smiling when her husband-to-be came to collect her. They were strangers, but she felt a surge of affection for him for bringing her out of the garden. His name was Fitz, he was a year older than her, and he blushed crimson when he saw her grin.

"You'll have a good life," he promised her, taking her hand in a sweaty palm. "My master's fair—rarely beats us, doesn't like to split up families. He said he could use someone like you to attend the ladies. You'll have it easier here."

A chain of teleporters led them to her new master's estate, far in the south. The other slaves—a smaller and more close-knit group than she had known, warriors and entertainers—welcomed her with cheers. One older woman, the cook, pinned an embroidered shawl around Shirley's head for a veil, and with song and a simple ceremony, she married Fitz.

The other slaves courteously left them the privacy of the barracks that first night, though the weather was damp. Bride and groom were shy, nervous. Fitz kissed her hands and pushed back the veil.

A pounding on the door interrupted their moment. The leader of the warrior slaves, a thin dark man, did not meet their eyes. "The master wants to see his new slave," he said.

Fitz, flushed with the whiskey the newlyweds had been given, failed to understand. "Can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"No."

Shirley stepped away from him, letting their joined hands fall apart. A cold knot of comprehension filled her stomach. "I'll go," she told him. The slave leader draped his coat over her shoulders, ignoring Fitz's baffled complaints, and led her to the master's house.

The Wingly waited for her in his study, where the eyes of slain beasts watched her from the walls. He dismissed her escort with a wave. "I thought I would welcome you to your new home myself," he said, facing Shirley across the room.

Shirley had always been meek. For the first time, anger loosened her tongue. "My lord, this is my _wedding night,_" she said coldly.

The Wingly's eyebrows arched. "So it is. We'll have a drink to celebrate." He indicated the bottle of champagne, the two glasses on the table between them. Slowly, seething, Shirley poured them full. Her wedding veil fell over her shoulders. She delivered one glass to her new master and stepped back, out of his reach. She left the second glass untouched on the table. He chuckled and sipped his drink, and she wished it were poison.

"Shirley. That's what they call you, isn't it? Your former master told me some fascinating things about you. I will be interested to find out if they are true."

Shirley would not join in the banter, would not play along with this cruel game. She looked straight at him, her eyes burning. "You are an abomination," she told him.

He set down his glass and folded his arms. "And you, pretty Shirley, are a slave," he answered, the teasing gone from his voice. "Drink or not, it's all the same to me. Now take off that veil. I want to see what I've paid for."

Fitz was inconsolable. When she returned alone, long after midnight, she found him pacing the slave barracks. None of the others could speak to him. The tracks of tears stained his face. He ran to Shirley, but instead of taking her in his arms, he dropped to his knees and buried his face in her middle. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," he said over and over.

Shirley looked down at her new husband, feeling very old. The affection she had felt for him was gone. She felt numb wherever he touched her. She seemed to be very far and high above him. Why was he crying when she could not? What right did he have?

In the end, she did forgive him. He could not have known his "good" master would treat a pretty female slave differently than his favorite men.

_She_ should have known. The promises of a slave, no matter how well-intended, meant nothing.

.

A world away, high in the sanctuary of the Dragoon Towers, those memories seemed unreal—something that had happened to someone else. Shirley could take them out and turn them over in her mind, feeling nothing, while her fingers were occupied plaiting Rose's glossy black hair. She thought about the stillborn boy she bore Fitz, the sister she suspected was half Wingly and suspected did not die by accident in her cradle, one year old. The touch of the little boy in Vellweb felt like her baby's fingers. Dry-eyed, she added a tenth strand to Rose's braid.

The Dark Dragoon relaxed under her touch. She did not speak, for which Shirley was grateful.

Rose was about her own age, but those wide surprised eyes made her seem so much younger. From what Syuveil implied about Charle Frahma's court, Shirley knew Rose was not the naïve child she seemed, but there remained a guiltlessness about her. Shirley protected her as well as she could. Even from Zieg, who was a good man at heart and a dear friend, but a complete asshole sometimes.

.

"You probably shouldn't go down into Vellweb like that anymore," Zieg told her that night, when all five Dragoons gathered around the fire in the men's tower. Neither Belzac nor Shirley had said a word about the incident in the fields, but word had carried to the commander anyway. "Better that they love you from a distance."

Zieg sat on the edge of the hearth, behind Rose's stool, unweaving all the braids Shirley had made in her hair. The firelight made him glow, with Rose a shadow before him.

Syuveil, perched atop the table they had dragged over for lack of better seating, propped his chin on his hands. His eyes strayed thoughtfully from Zieg to Shirley. "It's interesting how much more they adore her than the rest of us," he remarked.

Belzac made a neutral sound. "It's not _that_ strange."

"I didn't say strange. It makes perfect sense—she's the holy one, the far-seeing, the one with the healing touch. It's just interesting."

Shirley made no comment. Let them think what they wanted of her. She didn't feel holy, with her head still aching where the mob had ripped at her hair, and the bruises rising on her arms. She tugged her white cape more snugly around her shoulders. Even with the roaring fire in front of them, nights were cold in Vellweb, and the wind shrieked. Thunder rumbled around them. The Dragoon Towers dragged at the bottoms of the clouds. Perhaps this time, rain would fall.

She shared the bench where she sat with Belzac. The big man's head lay in her lap. She had tugged him down to rest there when he entered. He had resisted a moment, then relaxed. A little affection was all she could offer in repayment of his help earlier. He would hope for more, and Soa knew she probably should have kept her distance, but she owed him this much. His gaze was on Zieg, his hands folded still on his chest like a corpse, one that breathed and spoke with the voice of the deep. Shirley pulled the yellow scarf off his head—Fitz's scarf once, Belzac's now—and smoothed her fingers through the stubble of his scalp. She felt rather than heard him sigh.

"If I stop working alongside them after this, what will they think?" she demanded of Zieg. "They'll say I'm scared."

Zieg laughed patronizingly. "You don't understand the way your devotees think. They won't remember mobbing you. They'll be telling their _grandchildren_ how Dragoon Shirley came down and walked among them, and how they touched her with _this very hand_ before she was taken back up to the sky."

"To the Towers."

"It's the same thing by now."

Shirley's eyes narrowed in frustration. "Zieg, do you hear yourself? We're going to become another kind of Winglies to them at this rate."

"We have a long way yet to go for that," Syuveil interjected.

Belzac tilted his head back to catch the Jade Dragoon's attention. "There won't ever be enough of us to risk ruling them, right?" Syuveil shook his head. "Do you know how long we'll live?"

"Not yet." Syuveil had been researching the Dragoons as well as he could, always testing their heart rate, their response time, both in and out of Dragoon form. If any of them died—Soa forbid—they joked that he'd cut them up on the spot. His curiosity knew no bounds. "We might have been granted a dragon's lifespan, for all we know. Or maybe the strain on the human body means we'll all die young."

Zieg watched Rose's hair slipping between his fingers. "Not too young, I hope."

They were all silent for a moment, thinking that over. Belzac turned his eyes up to Shirley. She returned his gaze for a moment before he looked back to the fire. "No," he said, returning to the topic at hand. "Emperor Diaz rules, not us."

Syuveil chewed absent-mindedly at his lip. "You know, he wouldn't if it weren't for us. There are others who could lead. If people didn't associate him, mentally, with the mighty Dragoons, he would have been replaced by now."

"If it weren't for us, the rebellion would have been squashed by now."

Rose shook her head at Zieg. "How humble of you."

Zieg grinned ruefully. It pleased Shirley to see Rose talking back to Zieg and, more importantly, Zieg listening to her comments. They were still always together, and Rose still always looked like her mind was elsewhere, but now she seemed as likely to join him for company as vice versa. That part, Shirley didn't quite understand, but perhaps Rose just liked what was familiar.

A flash of lightning split the skies, brighter than the fire. The thunder that followed shook the Towers. Belzac glanced toward the door. "I hope Melbu Frahma and Magician Faust are having a hard time of it out there," he said.

Syuveil smirked. "I guarantee you that the Wingly cities are built to withstand storms. They probably directed this one our way to spare Charle's roses."

"But no rain will fall on Gloriano."

"Oh no, certainly not. That would be too generous."

Belzac sat up, stretched, and went to the cabinet where he and Zieg kept the liquor. "Anything for you, Rose? Syu?" he asked, gathering up their chipped glasses. Long years together had taught him what Zieg and Shirley drank.

"Thank you, Belzac, that would be lovely."

"None for me." Syuveil laughed. "I know what kind of swill you two keep in there. I wouldn't give it to a pig."

"How about a dragon?" Zieg shot back.

_Here we sit,_ Shirley thought, _the kings and queens of a new world. _She was not in the mood for banter. As Belzac passed out the glasses, she rose, smoothing her skirt. "It's late," she declared, shaking her head at the glass he offered her. "I'm going to sleep."

They turned towards her. "It's vicious out," Belzac said, his words punctuated by another peal of thunder. "Want me to walk you back?"

"No, you've already done—" She cut herself short, stamping down the resentment. She sighed and continued, less sharply. "I'll be fine. It's not far to the other Tower. Rose, don't let them keep you up too late."

"Sweet dreams, o radiant one," Zieg teased, leaning back against the hearth. Shirley rolled her eyes. She took down the lantern and lit it with a coal from the fire. One of the men would walk Rose back later.

The door swung open before her hand touched it. It brought a blast of wind that chased up the fire and rattled around the room. Shirley jumped back, seeing only a dark figure on the step. It bulled past her and into the firelight, before the hood came back, revealing Diaz. One of Vellweb's warriors followed him in and shut the door against the storm.

The little emperor swore as he untangled himself from his cloak, hair in messy spikes, crown askew. "Soa's tits, this is a bad night. Aren't you afraid you'll be blown away up here? These gusts nearly took me off the steps a time or two."

"Some of us like the danger." Zieg stood, sweeping off his place at the hearth for Diaz to take. Belzac took Shirley's unwanted glass and offered it to the emperor, then poured another for his guard. "It's nearly midnight, sire. What brings you all the way up here? Are we under attack?" Diaz's casual manner didn't seem to suggest it.

"Nothing of the sort." He seated himself on the hearth. Rose scooted away from him. "I actually have good news—for once."

Diaz's smile flickered. There was something tense about his manner. The emperor was always bursting with energy, but he seemed on edge tonight. "I suppose it could have waited for morning, but you'll want to hear this at once. It's good I found you all together."

Rose looked up, her black eyes on Diaz's face. "Shirley was just leaving."

"Oh? Stay a moment, my dear. This won't take long." She set down the lantern. Diaz hesitated, flexing his splayed fingers against each other. "Commander Feld, I've found you another Dragoon."

Eyes flashed at once to the sapphire Zieg had placed on the mantel. When Charle Frahma mentioned that a Wingly gamesmaster was intending to pit a great sea dragon in the Kadessa Coliseum, Zieg had snuck in—without Emperor Diaz's approval or even knowledge—and, in front of thousands of stunned Winglies, killed the beast. He escaped with the Dragoon stone, but the little dragonling was lost. So far the stone had refused to spark for anyone. For months now it had sat on the mantel, a promise of some future glory.

Zieg glanced from the stone to the emperor. "With that kind of news, lord, you can come barging in any time. But are you sure? Last time we tried to pick out a Dragoon ourselves, we got Syuveil here."

"You wound me, commander," Syuveil said dryly.

Diaz turned the glass of whiskey around in his fingers. He did not meet their eyes. "I'm quite sure of it, actually. Kanzas?"

They turned expectantly to Diaz's guard, who had propped himself wearily against the wall to nurse his whiskey. His eyes had been tracking one speaker to the next. Shirley had almost forgotten he was there.

Now that it was his turn, he lowered the glass from his lips. Dark red hair traced a narrow diamond around his mouth, bristling back from a cynical brow. He looked older than any of them, but a harsh life aged humans fast. "A big dark dragon came hunting down the southwestern coast," he said. "The thing spat lightning like a storm. It ripped up two Wingly villas before they even knew what hit 'em. When I saw it, I thought, well, those Dragoons in the north will be wanting this."

A greedy light kindled in Zieg's eyes as he considered yet another dragon to be added to his collection. "Sounds like our kind of monster," he agreed. "Can you lead us to it?"

Kanzas tilted his head. "Well, I would," he drawled, "but it's dead." Teeth flashed in his weathered face. "I killed it."

Silence fell as the Dragoons turned this over in their heads. At last Zieg nodded. "I see. All by yourself?" He traded glances with Belzac. Shirley knew that look, both skeptical and smug. Zieg thought himself oh, so clever when he caught a lie. "Did you know it took almost forty men to take down the first dragon?"

"Have you gotten better since then?"

Kanzas' casual irreverence did nothing to strengthen his story. Zieg turned to Diaz. The little emperor spread his hands wide. "I know it sounds unbelievable, commander, but he even had the stone."

"Anyone can find a rock and—" Zieg began, but he didn't finish.

All the air in the room went hot and dead, and the shadows lay too darkly against the walls. The hair rose tingling on their arms. The cups on the table rattled. A flash came, too bright, too near, and thunder shook the room. Shirley threw up her hand to shield her eyes, but the image of wings was already burned into them. She blinked hard, and the afterimage faded. The wings remained.

Kanzas hovered a foot above the floor, suspended on outstretched yellow-green wings. Dark armor, cracked and warped, shimmered unevenly in the firelight. Traces of violet and green eluded the eye. Shirley could almost see faces in the gnarled, misshapen plating. Spats of lightning played across his body, arcing from the Dragoon stone glowing in his chest.

"Good God," Shirley heard Syuveil mutter.

As quickly as they had appeared, wings and armor vanished. Kanzas thumped back to the floor, shaking out stiff joints. He cracked his neck to the side. "Might want to close your mouth, skinnybones," he told Syuveil. "Someone might get ideas."

The air rang with the hollowness that lingered after a lightning strike. Shirley squeezed her hand into a fist until she felt her pulse racing in her palm. Across the room, the other Dragoons looked dazed.

None of them could transform at will. Not even Zieg.

Emperor Diaz drained the last of his drink and set it down. "He was very convincing," he said mildly.

Kanzas searched Zieg's face, tagging him for the leader even without an introduction. When he walked forward—swaggered almost—Shirley realized that he was shorter than the other men. He might have been Rose's height. His boots lent him a false inch. His belt sagged low around his hips with the weight of the knives it carried. A fighting man, the kind Zieg wanted most in his little band, now that he had Rose.

"Now that we're all on board," Kanzas said, "I've come a long way, and I'm dead tired, and all I want is to know where to lay my head down tonight. Can I be one of you Dragoons? I'll fight anything you put in front of me. If you don't want me, say so, and I'll find myself some other place."

Humility seemed an unnatural condition for him—he was too blunt, clumsily aggressive and awkwardly apologetic by turns. He tried to be diffident and came across as careless instead. Instinctively, Shirley's heart went out to him.

It seemed that Zieg's did, too. If Kanzas had been pushy or demanding, the Dragoon commander would have turned against him—Shirley was certain of that. Zieg was the jealous kind. The fact that this newcomer had killed his dragon alone—if he told the truth—threatened Zieg's pride. But Kanzas asked _permission_ to be counted among them, and that won him a chance.

Zieg folded his arms across his chest, looking from Belzac to Emperor Diaz. "You're already one of us, Dragoon Kanzas," he answered. "Welcome to Vellweb."

The anxious tension went out of Kanzas. He slumped like a puppet. But his grin was steady this time, his fear of rejection relieved. "Well, that's good." He wavered on his feet.

Zieg saw it, too. He glanced around the inside of the tower, one cluttered room, crowded even without the four extra bodies packed around the fire. They only had the three beds, wedged against the back wall, two of them bunked for space and wedged. "Been a while since we had to bunk together," he told Belzac.

Belzac fixed him with a flat stare. "Back-to-back on the forest floor isn't spooning in a bed. You're like a furnace."

"Then you keep the bed and I'll spoon with Rose."

"No," Syuveil, Rose, and Shirley snapped simultaneously.

Kanzas held up his hands. "Whatever. I'll sleep on the floor." He looked ready to do it, too.

"Give up the storeroom," Syuveil said to Zieg. "It's time we spread out, anyway."

"Dragoon Shirley." She found Emperor Diaz looking at her. "You were on your way out, weren't you? Could you show our new comrade the way? I must bend your commander's ear about our battle plans."

"Of course."

Shirley retrieved the lantern and pulled her cape close. Syuveil whipped a blanket off of two of the beds and folded them into scratchy bundles. "Once you've rested," he told Kanzas, handing them over, "I'd like to know more about your experiences with the dragon." Kanzas nodded wearily. He must have been close to collapsing.

As Shirley headed for the door, Diaz took down the sapphire from the mantel. It was as big as a turkey egg. "Now there's just one to go," he said. "How do you like your army, Commander Feld?"

Shirley couldn't hear Zieg's answer. Syuveil's voice came more clearly, as Kanzas opened the door for her. "How the hell could he do that?"

Kanzas followed Shirley outside. The door boomed shut behind them. Light, warmth, and comrades vanished, leaving the storm.

The roaring tempest swallowed any word spoken more than an inch from the hearer's ear. It buffeted them against the wall. Shirley held high the lantern, glad for its closed glass sides, and started down the stairs. The Dragoon Towers were lattice-like in design, heavy stone turned light and airy by careful engineering, but the narrow spans were precarious in the dark and wind. She chose the simplest path to the third tower, following the circular outer walk so that they could hug the second tower for shelter. Kanzas stayed on her heels, hunched against the blast. She glanced back during a lightning flash, and the image of his grin burned against her eyes.

The wind turned the flying strands of her hair to a swam of bees, stinging her face and blinding her. She found the steps of the third tower by feel rather than by sight. She turned back to signal Kanzas. He stepped close to her, raising his voice to ask, "Have you ever thought about getting sucked right off these Towers?" She shook her head.

The storm seemed to have reinvigorated him. That lightning-flash grin came again. Before Shirley realized his plan, he unfurled the blankets he carried. The wind caught them at once, billowed like a sail, and jerked him toward the edge.

"What are you doing? Stop!" Shirley shrieked. She grabbed his belt and hauled him backward up the steps. One blanket went flapping into the void. They staggered inside the storage room. The door slammed between them and the storm. Kanzas was laughing.

"We'd be fine," he reminded her. "You still think like you're human, huh? How long have you been doing this?" He flicked his fingers out from his shoulders, miming wings.

She drew a deep breath and glared at him. "Too long."

She raised the lantern and looked around the tower. After the warmth and cheer they had left behind, it was bleak. The flickering flame cast deep shadows. Tangled heaps of furniture they had carried up from their old quarters in Magrad made monstrous shapes against the walls. Shirley had cleared the corner nearest the door, under the window, for preparing food. The rest was clutter, but of a lifeless and empty-feeling sort. Their voices echoed.

She turned to Kanzas, whose eyebrows shot up as he surveyed the gloom. "It's much better in daylight," she assured him. "Now that you're here, we'll get it squared away."

"Don't bother. It'll be fine. A coat of paint, some decorations, and it's home." Kanzas dragged chairs aside to clear a space on the floor. Shirley set the lantern down and shook out the remaining blanket. Together they spread it out to make a bed. Without the other blanket, it was pitifully stark. Shirley took off her cape and handed it to him with an apologetic shrug. "Tomorrow we'll put a proper bed together. Will you be all right for now?"

Kanzas plopped down in the middle of the blanket, felt its thickness, then stretched out. He gave the little sigh of a man just happy to be off his feet. "It'll do. A little cold maybe." He looked up at Shirley. "Care to keep me warm?"

Shirley had been asked the same question all her life, but never so bluntly. She laughed at his audacity. "I'm married," she told him.

"That so? I'll find some other way to keep warm then."

She ignored the crude insinuation. "Good night. Sweet dreams."

"I will," he answered. His eyes were already closed.

She left her light with him. Shivering in the wind, she picked her steps back to the second Dragoon Tower. The cold and dark waiting there matched the tower she had just left. Rose was not back yet. Shirley undressed by feel and lay down in the bed they shared.

Thoughts of their new comrade drifted through her head. There had been such _hunger_ in him to be accepted among the Dragoons, as if Zieg would ever have turned him away. As if Zieg wouldn't take any ragged son of a bitch who could get them one inch closer to liberty. And whatever gave Kanzas the power to slip into a dragon's soul on command—they'd make good use of that.

Shirley remembered, picking through her memories of those surreal moments, how Kanzas had twitched afterwards, as if in the throes of a minor seizure. She'd taken it for nerves, but it could have been more. Each of them had struggled through various side effects, which had either faded or become ordinary over time. Perhaps the tiny spasms were Kanzas' curse.

Shirley's had been blindness. That first time, she didn't know whether her vision would ever return. Belzac had sat beside her, holding her hand, apologizing for—well, for everything. That was the first moment Shirley hated him. But she loved him, too. He had done his best by her. She couldn't blame him if it wasn't enough. Even if she did blame him.

Whatever had happened to Kanzas in killing the dragon, taking its soul, he had done it alone. Even Zieg had had Belzac by his side. It was a miracle Kanzas had gotten so far. He had come to them offering his help, needing theirs.

And, Soa have mercy, he had no idea what he was getting into with the Dragoons. He'd learn soon enough. Shirley would help him. Give him a better start than she had had.

On such thoughts, she dozed, waking only when Rose put her cold feet on Shirley's shins.

.

She slept poorly, woke early, chased by dreams of clawing hands. When her eyes popped open, she stared fixedly at the ceiling, reorienting herself. Her breath came fast. The sheets were a sweaty nightmare tangle. In the middle of it all, Rose slept soundly, curled like a child with her knees to her chest and Shirley's arm imprisoned against her ribs. The beams creaked overhead as the Black Dragon, Michael, shifted his position on the roof. Shirley was safe here, out of reach of all hands but a few. She relaxed.

She freed her arm and slipped out of bed, leaving Rose to her peace. After a storm like that, the light should have been clear and washed, but again the rain refused to fall. The sun rose over the same dusty city as before. The morning was cold. Kanzas had her cape, though, so she went out in her cotton dress with her hands balled in her armpits.

Across the empty pit of air, she saw Dart, Zieg's shining red dragon, stretching atop the first of the Towers. Feyrbrand and Condor were too heavy for permanent aerial residency and lived below. The city was still in shadow. The sun had not yet risen far enough above the crest of the mountains to reach any but the highest spires of Vellweb. For a moment, she could have been alone in the world.

But others were stirring. She heard the rattle-creak of the massive pulleys that supplied the Dragoons with food and with endless buckets of water for their cistern. She went to the jetty to meet the delivery.

Turnips—they always had turnips; bread that had been fresh and warm half a mile ago; mushrooms; a string of sausages. It didn't matter what Vellweb sent its heroes. Like locusts, the Dragoons ate everything. What surprised her was the basket of wildflowers: crocuses and a heap of stripped trumpetvines. She thought she knew why. A cold lump in her stomach banished hunger. She would spread them out among her comrades, and pretend it had nothing to do with her.

Belzac often came down to help her prepare breakfast. Diaz's meetings always ran late, though, and she didn't expect to see him for a while. In the privacy of this great height, Shirley bundled everything up in her skirt, goose-pimpled to her bare knees, and carried it to the uneven spike of the third tower. Her mind wandered while her hands went through the familiar work of dividing the food, heaping it onto their clay bowls—a gift from Diaz—and the bowls onto the wide board they used for a tray. She dropped the flowers at one edge of the table. The turnips would have to stew a while before they were edible.

She was setting them aside when something, some sound, tickled at her attention. Shirley stood still for a moment, then seized the chopping knife and spun around.

She would have sworn someone stood right behind her, but found nothing there. On the other side of the room, though, the new Dragoon lay on the floor under his blanket, watching her with his hands folded behind his head. At the sight of her brandished knife, he arched one eyebrow.

Slowly, Shirley lowered the knife. "How long have you been watching me?" she demanded.

Kanzas shrugged. "Heard you come in." He squinted against the sun. He was rumpled with sleep, but looked somewhat less haggard and hollow-eyed than the night before. In the morning light, his red hair was at odds with his teak-brown skin. The stiffness to it suggested some kind of dye.

She stepped sideways, so that the light behind her would not carve her body from the dress. " We'll make up a real bed for you today," she said again, setting the knife down. "I hope you slept well."

"A little lonely, but good enough. You?"

"Just fine, thanks."

He grinned at her without rising. Suddenly Shirley knew with absolute certainty that he was naked under that blanket, and that he wanted to shock and upset her with that fact. She decided to ignore it.

"I was thinking," Kanzas said. "The blond man—that's Commander Feld, right?"

"Yes. It's just Zieg up here, though."

"Thought so," he said to himself. "He looks like he never got whipped much."

She shook her head. "People have always liked him."

"I like him, too."

"Then you'll get along with him better than Syu." She leaned back against the counter.

"Syu?"

"Syuveil. He was the one sitting on the table."

Kanzas brightened at the reminder. "Ah, right, the skinnybones! What's his deal?" He sat up and stretched. The blanket fell down to his waist, baring a torso riddled with scars and blackened with tattoos. The Dragoon stone, a colorless dark mass, lay in the hollow of his throat on a leather thong. Something seemed crooked about his hunched ribs, though she couldn't pinpoint how.

Shirley saw no reason to hide anything. They would have to live with him, and he needed to know his new comrades—for better or for worse. "Rose," she answered. "They escaped from Charle Frahma together."

"And that's the girl Zieg kept kissin' with his eyeballs? She's pretty. Is she a Dragoon too?" Shirley nodded. "Damn. She looks like a good fart would knock her over. Didn't hear of them down in my parts… How about the giant, who's he?"

"Belzac, the Dragoon of Earth."

"And if Zieg cocks it all up, he'll be the one to take over."

Shirley bit the inside of her lip. She hadn't let herself consider this. The Dragoons without Zieg—he was an ass, but none of them would have gotten this far without him dragging them in his wake. Wouldn't _want_ to be here. Without Zieg, who would lead them? "Not Belzac," she answered at last. "I'd probably be the one."

"And that would make you Dragoon Shirley," Kanzas concluded, "the white lady herself, the one every man here's half in love with." His mouth quirked sideways. "But I already knew that."

Shirley eyed him. "How so?"

Kanzas held her gaze a moment before his grin straightened out. "Last night, when I came to see the Emperor, folks were putting together that bundle of weeds you've got there. I asked him what for. He told me about the ruckus you caused yesterday. What are you gonna do with 'em?"

She shrugged restlessly. "Give them to the others."

"If you don't want them, throw the damn things back over the edge."

"Feelings would be hurt."

"Well, we can't have _that_."

At the knowing, mock-sympathetic look he sent her way, Shirley snorted a laugh. He'd keyed to the quiet resentment she kept locked down inside.

Kanzas went on, resting his arms across his crooked knees. He kept the blanket modestly draped. Maybe Shirley's lack of response made him think better of his prank. "Diaz said some other things about you. You were one of the first, right? Knew Zieg way back when?"

"We had the same master. He planned the escape. He and Belzac did the killing."

"Diaz also said you were a widow," Kanzas said then, and his eyes were very dark and intent. "So last night when you said you were married, what was that?"

_That_ was the look she felt against her back earlier, the one that made it seem he stood close enough to kiss her, though an entire room lay between them. Shirley pressed her lips together. She countered his too-direct stare with one of her own, neither cowed nor abashed. "Just being polite about not wanting to sleep with you."

Both of his eyebrows quirked at that. "Then fucking _say_ so, and don't lie to me."

He flipped the blanket aside and pushed himself to his feet. Shirley kept her eyes steady on his face. "You see, Dragoon Shirley," he continued, weaving his way through a thicket of boxes and beams and broken chair legs, "I'm a liar to the bone, and I know my own kind when I see them."

As he approached, Shirley reached instinctively behind herself for the knife. The man's tone was casual, his attitude friendly, but there was a sharpness behind the words and his eyes that she no longer trusted. His smile was not what it had been. "You think I'm like you?" she asked.

"Well. Are you?"

"I don't know you well enough to say," she hedged, remaining diplomatic.

"I'll make it easy on you. Here's what they say about you down in Vellweb—that you've got the noblest little heart ever beat, that you're good and kind and brave beyond any mortal patience, that your touch is health and life. That one kiss from your pretty lips would seal a man's soul for good. That you'll be the one to save us all." Kanzas stopped, an arm's length away and feeling closer. "But they didn't say you were a liar, which means I know you one jot better than the rest right now. What do you think?"

Still Shirley met his gaze without flinching. He didn't scare her. She raised her chin. "I think," she said, very quietly, "that you should put some clothes on."

"Should I?"

"Yes. Belzac will be down soon."

Suddenly the sharpness, the soft half-threat in his words was gone, and the sheepish easy grin returned. "Sorry," he said. "Haven't been in decent company for a while—I've lost the knack." He bowed and walked away to find his clothes.

Shirley released her white-knuckle grip on the knife and resumed preparing the food for the other Dragoons. From behind her came the faint rustle of clothing. "I hope one of those is for me," he called.

"Did you think we were going to starve you?"

"I don't know what to think of you yet."

Kanzas reappeared beside her, fully dressed. He had her white cape balled up under his arm. When Shirley reached for it, he took the opportunity to lean past her and pluck a mushroom from her carefully divided bowls.

"Give it back," she said. He popped it into his mouth and bit down. "Fine. That one's yours."

He swallowed and went for another, like a mischievous child. Shirley grabbed his wrist. He looked at her, his face very close to hers now. Something sparked behind his sunken eyes. "I wonder what you taste like," he said.

Shirley let go of him as if burned.

The door opened, a flood of sunlight immediately dammed by a large silhouette. Belzac entered glowing with sleepy goodwill, freshly shaven, a little spot of blood at one corner of his lip. His smile faded into stillness as he looked back and forth between the two of them. Kanzas went for the second mushroom. "Good morning," he said through a mouthful.

"Morning." Belzac focused on Shirley. "I'm half an hour late, and you find a new helper?"

He spoke lightly, but creases of worry appeared above his brow. Shirley smiled for him. "He was already here," she explained. Still he looked at her, his eyes saying _are you all right, is this man bothering you_—the way they did every time they were in new company, always ready to fight the battles she didn't want fought.

Kanzas read the silent exchange. "Was I wrong about her being married?" he asked dryly.

With a visible effort, Belzac said, "No." Shirley said nothing.

Kanzas took a third mushroom from the tray. This time Shirley just shot him a glare. It rolled off. "Shirley was just telling me about you Dragoons," he said to Belzac, pleasantly enough, as if the tension didn't hum like a lightning bolt seeking a target in one or another of them. "Just trying to put that together with what I saw last night. You've all had months to get to know each other—I'm trying to catch up."

Belzac tore his eyes from Shirley's. He forced a flinty smile. It didn't last. Shirley sighed and redistributed the mushrooms to account for the stolen ones, leaving them to their posturing. "Sure thing," Belzac said. "What do you want to know?"

"Correct me when I'm wrong. Zieg's the head man, Rose is the one he's screwing—"

"—not yet."

"Really? All right then. Rose is the one he _wants_ to be screwing. Likewise skinnybones, who's the brainy type, from the looks of it. And Shirley here's our saint." Belzac leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. His jaw tightened slightly at the crude assessment of Rose. "Which leaves you," Kanzas finished. "Did you know she didn't look to you?"

"What?" Belzac asked. Shirley looked up from a handful of flowers.

"Last night, when you all made me prove myself. Caught you all off guard. You know how people go straight for their buddies when they're spooked? Rose got Zieg's hand, and he didn't seem to mind. Skinnybones thought Diaz was supposed to have the answers. _You,_" –he tipped his fingers in a mock salute— "looked around for Shirley here to make sure she was okay. But she never looked back at you. What does that mean?"

Belzac's brow darkened. "What are you—"

"Maybe you're not as scary as you think, Kanzas," Shirley intervened smoothly. "Remember, we're used to being Dragoons."

"Not enough to remember that you can't fall." He turned back to Belzac, switching tack. "Zieg up? I want to talk to him, too. Get his take. What he wants from me."

Wordlessly Belzac jerked his head towards the door. Kanzas grinned at both of them and went out, letting the door slam behind him.

"I'm sorry," Shirley told Belzac. "He has… a way with people."

"He has _his_ way with people," the big man muttered. "Was he like that with you, too?"

"No. He was just joking around." She didn't tell about Kanzas being naked, or the weird challenge he'd offered her. Belzac didn't need to know. Maybe Kanzas was just that clumsy with social cues—unable to read when Shirley had had enough, unable to keep from offending and antagonizing Belzac. Soa only knew how he'd do with Zieg. Zieg was touchy and didn't have even half Belzac's patience.

But as Belzac shook off the sour feeling and started filling her in on last night's discussion (whether Kanzas had left a vassal dragon out in the world somewhere, an assessment of the next nearest set of Wingly plantations, the progress of Syuveil's giant cannon idea), a new thought left Shirley cold.

If Kanzas _knew_ the effect he had on people, with his double-edged questions and that too-close stare—if he did it deliberately, and only played apologetic when he saw he'd pushed too far—

—she didn't want to think it—

—he'd been probing her for information on the Dragoons, their relationships to one another, who was most important. What she had told him, unwitting, not intending, was that Belzac was irrelevant. He was not the one whose opinions carried weight.

That explained why Kanzas had taunted him, wearing that friendly smile. He knew he could get away with it. He had humbled himself for Zieg, apologized to Shirley, but he made no concessions for the big man who was the least of them, despite his strength. Worst of all, Kanzas had seen that Shirley herself wouldn't defend him. She had betrayed her best friend.

If she was right, if these uneasy suspicions were more than paranoia, then she had created a monster. Soa save them from each other.

Belzac had stopped talking, peering at her with anxious eyes. Shirley opened her mouth to tell him, but she couldn't. It was too cruel. She had to be wrong. Belzac waited for her, though, and now she had to say something. Syuveil's question came to mind, the last she heard before the door closed between them. She lifted her eyes to her friend's worried face.

"Tell Syuveil—I think it's because Kanzas is completely insane."


End file.
